Tony Burton

Tony Burton's books include “Lake Chapala: A Postcard History” (2022), “Foreign Footprints in Ajijic” (2022), “If Walls Could Talk: Chapala’s historic buildings and their former occupants” (2020), (available in translation as “Si Las Paredes Hablaran"), "Mexican Kaleidoscope” (2016), and “Lake Chapala Through the Ages” (2008). Amazon Author Page                                          Facebook Page

Oct 032024
 

What was Italian Count Giuseppe Antona doing at Lake Chapala in 1895? Shooting as many teal ducks as possible! And he wrote all about it for The Detroit Free Press.

Who was Giuseppe Antona?

Count Alessandro Giuseppe (sometimes Guiseppe) Valerio Antona was born in Asli, Italy, on 10 May 1865 and died in Detroit, Michigan, on 27 January 1931. According to a short piece about him in The Detroit Free Press shortly after he moved to the US in 1893, he had previously worked for the Italian government, and came from an old Piedmont family.

His grandfather was “the Count of Casale and Montebello until the Austrian domination in Italy obliterated the title with many others in Piedmont.” Following the death of his elder brother in February 1894, Giuseppe theoretically succeeded to the “earldom and estates of Barraggio, including one of the largest and most valuable vineyard tracts in all Piedmont,” in the event that his family’s title was ever restored by King Umberto I, as was widely expected to happen at the time. Unfortunately for Antona, the King was assassinated in 1900.

In April 1894 a Mexican newspaper reported that “Sra Annetta Josefa Valerio-Antona and Sr Alessandro Giuseppe Valerio-Antona, Italian writers who have lived in US for some time” were staying at the Hotel Humboldt for a couple of months, with plans to write articles for US news outlets and a book about Mexico. This report was not entirely accurate. Annetta Josefa Halliday (1866-1949) was American, not Italian, and went to Mexico as a special correspondent for the Chicago Times. Giuseppe did not marry Annetta until 26 June that year; the newlyweds received a cable of congratulations from President Porfirio Díaz and his wife.

Despite being offered a post as Secretary to the Italian Royal Legation in Cairo, Egypt, Antona chose to remain in Detroit, and do some writing alongside investing in real estate, construction, a chemical business and the wine trade. Annetta continued her established career in writing and lecturing. Less than a month after their marriage, Annetta gave a presentation on “Mexico, the Egypt of the New World” at the Chateau Frontenac in Quebec City, Canada. Annetta also taught history and art at the Ganopel School of Musical Art. She was also reportedly working on a book about Mexico, titled The Florence of Mexico, based on her knowledge of Mexico and Mexican customs. Whether by coincidence or not, this was precisely the same title as a work by Mexican diplomat Eduardo A Gibbon published a few years earlier. She also published articles in Town Topics, Smart Set, Munsey’s, McClure’s, Scribner’s, Collier’s, Good Housekeeping, Outing and the New York Tribune.

The Antonas’ only child, Janice, was born in Michigan on 15 June 1901. Eleven years later, in 1912, Detroit society was shocked to the core when the “Count and Countess” were arrested in relation to the sudden death of their housekeeper, and were held behind bars for several days. According to press reports, their housekeeper, Miss Lizzie Fleming died at the age of 63 on 4 July after a short illness, and her body was cremated the following day. Suspicions were arisen because a few days prior to her death, Fleming made a will leaving virtually everything to Mrs. Antona. Her relatives in Ohio, who did not learn about her death until a few weeks later, claimed that Fleming had often expressed a horror of cremation and had already purchased a cemetery lot for her burial, and demanded an investigation.

What did Giuseppe Antona write about Chapala?

Antona opens his article with an exaggeratedly poetic description of Lake Chapala, setting the scene for the spring morning when he set off with three friends (one of them the son of the American consul) to shoot waterbirds at the lake. After taking the train from Guadalajara to Atequiza, the four gun-toting sportsmen’s plans to take the stage coach to Chapala were thwarted—”rendered impossible by the conductor’s illness”—so they “procured horses with some difficulty for ourselves and one extra for provisions and ammunition,” before riding south to the lake.

Antona’s article is illustrated by two unsigned sketches, which may well be the author’s own work: one of the village of Chapala, and the other of an unidentified tiny lakeshore village.

After riding through “Rancho del Mirador” and three small haciendas—San Nicolas, Labor and Buena Vista— the group approached Chapala, entering the village through a “rustic wood gate” designed to keep village livestock (and people) off the adjoining hacienda land. (Mexican Herald correspondent Owen Wallace Gillpatrick, who rode from Atequiza to the lake about three years later, claimed to have ridden through about a dozen ranches, separated by gates which were opened “at the rate of a centavo a gate, which is cheap as gates go.”)

In the 1890s the village of Chapala was tightly sandwiched between the Hacienda del Cuije (to the west and north) and the Hacienda de la Labor (to the east). As Antonio de Alba wrote decades later in Chapala, the northern limit of the village until some years into the twentieth century was approximately along the line followed by calle Degollado. It was several years after Antona’s visit before the local haciendas lost their territorial power, and Chapala had room to expand.

Antona’s visit predated the opening of the Hotel Arzapalo in 1898, so where did he stay? Arriving in Chapala, Antona and his friends “dismounted at the Inn of the ‘Nueva Purissima,’ [which] was more suited to be called a stable than anything else.” According to Antona, the rooms had no windows, a description which does not match the small inn where Eduardo Gibbon had stayed a few years earlier. Antona’s hostelry was the (no longer extant) building called “Mesón de la Purísima,” located where the Plaza Chapala Hotel (Avenida Madero #232) is today.

Antona-Image

Antona and his companions walked down to the beach, where:

The view was most fascinating: with rolling hills, steep mountains, the perfect sky, and the villas scattered here and there; one called Monte Carlo was kept by an English man named Crow[e] and nestled among the rocks like a little fortress.”

Antona’s mention of “villas” (plural), the Montecarlo, and of its then owner, Septimus Crowe, all dovetail perfectly with my own view of when and how Chapala first began its courtship with tourism. Chapala’s development certainly began some years before 1895, the date often used (even today) in some Spanish-language accounts.

The beach reminded Antona of his native land: “The smooth, sandy stretch of beach touched by the fringe of the waves, recalled the lake regions of sunny Italy.” But it was not tourism that brought Antona and his friends to Chapala, it was the local wildlife, including:

the wild teal duck, which made their homes in the tangle of matted vegetation on the shores, and render Chapala a veritable paradise.”

After bathing in the lake, they:

procured a native boat and an Indian who served both as a steersman and oarsman, and embarked just before sunset well provided with ammunition and Parker guns, our zest for sport heightened by the tract of morass visible in the distance… which our greed told us could not but abound with prey.

Our craft, made from a hollowed tree trunk, had for oars and rudder a single pole, such as might be called a slender flag-staff in the states, and used for such on national holidays, and which our Indian boatman and guide, Feliciano, maneuvered much like a laundryman attempting to fill a receptacle of soiled clothes.

Antona-Image-2

By moonlight, with the stars twinkling overhead, the men:

gradually and cautiously approached the feeding grounds, and leaving the smallest of wakes behind us, slid gently through the reeds and grasses and anchored behind some great logs near a mud bank.”

As hundreds and hundreds of ducks started feeding in front of them, the men opened fire:

Out of the reeds and sedge flew the terrified fowl, hundreds of wounded concealing themselves in the rushes, others half-swimming, half-wading away in their fright, the loud flapping of wings of the thousands in flight seeming like distant thunder, while dull thuds and loud splashes made known where our shots had told upon water and upon land.”

After waiting a few minutes—and as surviving ducks returned to feed—the men opened fire again… and again:

Each man emptied his barrels as quickly as possible into the black clouds, loading up again every three minutes as long as ammunition lasted.”

When the dawn light came up, the men collected “200 ducks, or 50 apiece, all blue-winged teal.” The ducks were taken to shore, and a Mexican boy hired to carry them back to the village, while the men rowed their boat back.

In addition to his article about Lake Chapala, Giuseppe Altona also published pieces about Alaska and America-Russia relations.

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.

Lake Chapala: A Postcard History uses reproductions of more than 150 vintage postcards to tell the incredible story of how Lake Chapala, at the end of the nineteenth century, became a significant international tourist destination. Most chapters of If Walls Could Talk: Chapala’s Historic Buildings and Their Former Occupants (also published in Spanish as Si las paredes hablaran: Edificios históricos de Chapala y sus antiguos ocupantes) relate to the early tourist history of Chapala.

 

Source

  • Guiseppe [Giuseppe] Antona. 1895. “Shooting Teal Duck at Lake Chapala.” The Detroit Free Press, 3 March 1895, 11.
  • Antonio de Alba. 1954. Chapala. Guadalajara: Banco Industrial de Jalisco.
  • The Detroit Free Press: 10 Dec 1893, 23; 3 Jun 1894, 9.
  • El siglo diez y nueve: 17 April 1894, 17.
  • Eduardo A Gibbon. 1893. Guadalajara, (La Florencia Mexicana). El salto de Juanacatlán y El Mar Chapálico. 1992 reprint, Guadalajara: Presidencia Municipal de Guadalajara.
  • The Omaha Evening Bee: 26 Mar 1895, 1.
  • Muncie Evening Press: 31 Jul 1912, 2.
  • Quebec Morning Chronicle: 4 July 1894, 2.
  • The American: 29 Mar 1895, 1.

Comments, corrections and additional material are welcome, whether via the comments feature or email.

Sep 262024
 

Herbert Johnson (1877-1960) and his wife, Georgette (1893-1975), settled in Ajijic in December 1939. Shortly after Herbert died in Ajijic in 1960, Georgette returned to live in the UK.

These photographs come from a photo album that once belonged to Georgette. For the story of its rediscovery by historian Dr Kimberly Lamay Licursi in an estate sale in New York, see

The photos in the album are in no particular order and have no captions or dates. While most of the photos in the album date from 1940-1945, some of the photos in this gallery must be a few years later.

This gallery focuses on Ajijic and its surrounding area:

Herbert Johnson. c. 1946.
Herbert Johnson. c. 1946.
Herbert Johnson. c. 1946.
Herbert Johnson. c. 1946.
Herbert Johnson. c. 1946.
Herbert Johnson. c. 1946.
Herbert Johnson. c. 1946.
Herbert Johnson. c. 1946.
Herbert Johnson. c. 1946.
Herbert Johnson. c. 1946
Herbert Johnson. c. 1946
Herbert Johnson. c. 1946
« of 2 »


Note

Acknowledgment

My sincere thanks to Dr Kimberly Lamay Licursi for recognizing the importance of this photo album and for kindly entrusting it to my care.

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.

Chapter 9 of Foreign Footprints in Ajijic: Decades of Change in a Mexican Village is devoted to the Johnsons and their time in Ajijic.

Comments, corrections and additional material are welcome, whether via comments feature or email.

Sep 192024
 

Though E. Ernest Bilbrough (1861-1891) died tragically young, he certainly had some adventures before departing this world.

One of the three children born to Thomas Priestley Bilbrough and his wife, Gertrude Elizabeth Bates, Edward Ernest Bilbrough was born in Liverpool, UK, on 6 March 1861. Details of his education are unknown, but he became a writer and photographer. He published his first book, Twixt France and Spain; Or, A Spring in the Pyrenees, in 1884, and the following year the UK-based periodical The Field printed Bilbrough’s account of sport and travel in Mexico. This article includes a description of his experiences at Lake Chapala. Also relating to Mexico, though as a photographer, Bilbrough was credited for some of the photos illustrating an article in The Graphic in 1886 about the Mexican National Railroad.

By 1887, Bilbrough had moved to New Zealand and been awarded a “certificate of excellence” in an Auckland Society of Arts competition for a set of six landscape photographs. At about this time, he was elected Secretary of the Athenaeum, a newly formed Auckland literary and debating society.

On 13 June 1889, Bilbrough married Mary Jane MacKellar (1865–1922), the Shanghai-born daughter of “Mrs MacKeller of The Pines, Epsom, and the late John MacKellar Esq. of London and Calcutta.”

Bilbrough’s second book, Brett’s Handy Guide to New Zealand., was published in 1890, only months before his untimely death in Auckland on 27 March 1891, shortly after his 30th birthday. Bilbrough was buried in the city’s Purewa Cemetery. His obituary in the New Zealand Herald explained how the well-known manager of Cook’s Tourists’ Agency in Auckland had been in failing health for several weeks, despite completing a trip to England the previous year.

Unusually, it was only after the death of his mother—Gertrude Bates Bilbrough—almost thirty years later, that his estate in the UK was settled, with probate (for effects valued at £1151) then granted to Bilbrough’s widow, Mary Jane.

Gertrude Bates Bilbrough, who died in Hong Kong, had close ties to “Wonsan Korea and Victoria Island Lower Burma.” Probate for her estate, valued at £1249, 2s, 5d, was granted to Bilbrough’s brother, Charles Francis Stanhope Bilbrough. Robert Neff has written several interesting articles about the family’s links to Korea:

What did E Ernest Bilbrough write about Mexico and Lake Chapala?

Bilbrough opens his article, published in England, by claiming that, “Of all the civilized countries, Mexico is undoubtedly the least known, especially to dwellers on this side of the Atlantic.” He then points out that Mexico has four railways already built, and several more under construction. The four existing lines were the Mexican Railway (Mexico City to Veracruz), the Mexican Central (Mexico City to the northern border and New York), the Mexican National (Mexico City north, but not yet reaching the US border), and Inter-oceanic (“so called because it approaches neither ocean.”)

The author considered Mexican roads “frightful,” and recommended overland travel by horseback, “preferably on a steed of your own, though others can be hired from place to place if desired.” Horses could be hired for one dollar a day, but it was necessary to add another dollar for the horse’s attendant. Travel by stage coach brought its own perils, and Bilbrough advised, in the event of a hold-up, not to flee, and “never carry arms unless you intend to use them.”

He also recommended that travelers forget about regular hotels—”in the interior, hotel charges may be reckoned generally at from two dollars per diem to four, in the capital and chief towns from three dollars to six dollars, according to your room, your restaurant, and your liquor”—and consider staying in haciendas:

Accommodation can almost invariably be procured at the haciendas for the night—that is to say, as a guest—even without a letter of introduction of any kind; and right good-hearted men some of the “hacendados “ are too, giving you of their best, and giving freely.”

The main purpose of his article was to describe the opportunities Mexico offered for hunting. Bilbrough thought the methods for shooting wildfowl at Lake Texcoco were unsportsmanlike because:

the sport consists in erecting batteries of guns on three different levels close to all the favourite feeding grounds. The first discharge is directed at the birds on the water, the next just as they rise, and the last sweeps about two yards from the surface, so that it is a lucky bird that gets away. These ‘sportsmen’ have a lofty contempt for the individual who allows the bird to rise before firing.

Eastern end of Lake Chapala. (For complete map, see "Lake Chapala Through the Ages")

Eastern end of Lake Chapala. (For complete map, see “Lake Chapala Through the Ages”)

He contrasted this with the situation at Lake Chapala, where “some splendid sport is to be had, not exactly on the lake itself, but on the land which receives its overflow, and is known as ‘cienega,’ a marsh.”

These ciénegas were at the eastern end of the lake, and are marked on the map as “former wetlands.” Some of these ciénegas were drained and converted to farmland twenty years after Bilbrough’s visit.

Bilbrough was sufficiently astute to recognize that the ciénegas played an important role in the local ecosystem:

These ‘cienegas’ form the most valuable pasturage for cattle and horses when drained, partially levelled, and well ditched; but are excessively dangerous to man and beast in their natural state, being nothing less than bogs with a thin crust of treacherous, safe-looking soil. Their value, however, is really derived from the very same cause which makes them dangerous: this being the porous or penetrable state of the lower strata, which receives the overflow from the lake at a period of the year when there is no rain, and promotes the growth of the grass when nothing but surface irrigation, at immense expense, would otherwise produce such an early crop.”

Bilbrough then described in detail his visit “last winter” to an area of ciénega belonging to an hacienda some twenty miles from Lake Chapala, where he enjoyed some varied and excellent shooting:

The best—that is, the most abundant sport, was duck and geese shooting. Of the former, mallards, green teal, blue teal, redhead, wood-ducks, tree-ducks, and pintails were the most numerous varieties; while grey and white geese were in tens of thousands on some fields where the grass was sprouting. Snipe were fairly plentiful (one morning I shot eight, and three the same afternoon), hares and quail likewise. Curlews, sandsnipe, glossy ibis and white ditto, green shanks, pelicans, grey cranes (Grullas pardas), spoonbills, avocets, and stilts were numerous; water hens (which are never eaten there) and thrashers (yellow-throated and red winged) very abundant.”

Ground squirrels were plentiful in the hedges, and I believe rabbits flourish during the rains (May to October), when hares are also more prolific. There were several coyotes, but I never managed to get near enough, unfortunately, to kill one; though common owls, which hooted over my room at night, I used to shoot by moonlight, and some fine horned specimens were bagged also.”

But of all the varieties of sport, none had the same interest as the pursuit of white cranes, called also soldier cranes (Grullas blancas), which are the shyest birds and the wariest it has yet been my lot to stalk. Deer are much less difficult to approach, for a sharp cry or whistle will generally make them halt long enough to give you a chance to get your rifle to bear. Not so white cranes; the least sound, the least movement, and they are off.”

The rifles at the hacienda were not true enough for such sport, and I was obliged to use ball in my gun. Even thus handicapped, pelicans, grey cranes, greater ibis, geese, etc., were added to the bag, but not till the last days of my stay did a white crane crown the whole. It was feeding with four others (they never go alone, but seldom more than a pair of old birds and their young will be seen together, while grey crane always are in flocks) among the maize stalks about one hundred and fifty yards from the nearest hedge, and these stalks, being so numerous and thick, make shooting very difficult. This time, however, I had a fair shot, and saw the bird fall, shot through the wing and body. He was a fine specimen—5ft. 3½in from tip of beak to toe, 7ft. 1½in. across the wings, and weighed 14½lb.”

Other travelers and explorers profiled on this site who have written about hunting at Lake Chapala include:

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.

Illustrated by reproductions of vintage postcards, chapters 6 and 8 of Lake Chapala: A Postcard History look at history of the eastern end of the lake, and the area’s environmental change.

Sources

  • E Ernest Bilbrough. 1884. Twixt France and Spain; Or, A Spring in the Pyrenees. Sampson Low and Co.
  • E Ernest Bilbrough. 1885. “Sport and travel in Mexico.” The Field, 24 October 1885, 585-6.
  • E Ernest Bilbrough (editor). 1890. Brett’s Handy Guide to New Zealand. Auckland: H. Brett.
  • The Graphic: An Illustrated Weekly Newspaper: 24 Apr 1886, 8.
  • The New Zealand Herald: 25 Feb 1887, 11; 8 Apr 1887, 6; 24 April 1891, 9.

Comments, corrections and additional material are welcome, whether via the comments feature or email.

Sep 122024
 

Author and social activist Joan Frost, a resident of Jocotepec, was the leader of a group of friends who co-founded Amigos de Salud in 1974. That year, the group organized the sale of hand-colored greetings cards to raise funds for medicines for the Centro de Salud in Jocotepec, which was due to open 1 January 1975. The artwork for the first card was a black and white drawing donated by Bob Neathery; local schoolchildren helped hand color the cards to give them a special holiday flavor. A pack of ten cards (whether black and white or hand-colored) with envelopes cost 15 pesos (then about US$1.25). They were available for purchase at three main locations: Ramón’s Bar in Jocotepec, Servicios Unlimited in Ajijic, and Los Arcos supermarket in Chapala.

Carla Manger. 1982. Untitled street scene.

Carla Manger. 1982. Untitled street scene.

The cards became an annual event. Sold primarily in the months leading up to Christmas, the simple bi-fold cards, illustrated with original artwork, had no interior wording, making them perfect for any occasion. A large number of area artists, including many of the best in the region, allowed Amigos de Salud to reproduce their work to help raise funds. For some artists, it was valuable additional exposure.

The precise wording on the back of each card changed over the years in response to gradual changes in the focus of Amigos de Salud.

Carla Manger. 1982. La Quinta (Los Naranjitos) Jocotepec.

Carla Manger. 1982. La Quinta (Los Naranjitos) Jocotepec.

In Jean Caragonne‘s case, her painting of the view from her house in Chapala, titled Cerro San Miguel, was her very first painting at Lake Chapala! It was used on a 1986 card.

The youngest contributor to the Amigos de Salud cards was Adriana de Rocio Garcia Hernandez, aged 15 when her painting El pescador was used.

For about two decades, Amigos de Salud, which was also financially supported for many years by the Ajijic Mexico National Chili Cookoff (also co-founded by Joan Frost!), helped many health and educational programs, including the Lakeside School for the Deaf and the Women’s Development Clinic founded by Sylvia Flores.

Prior to Amigos de Salud, Joan Frost had helped coordinate medical consultations and surgeries for Chapala-area children via the Shriners organization. As the Lake Chapala area developed, and its needs and priorities changed, Joan Frost merged Amigos de Salud in 1993 into the newly formed Programa Pro Niños Incapacitados del Lago, whose worthy efforts continue to make a difference to this day. It is unlikely that any foreign resident will make a greater contribution to the welfare of children at Lake Chapala than the tireless and extraordinarily selfless Joan Frost.

The artists whose work appeared on Amigos de Salud cards included:

Blanca Aldana, Bruce Allen, Daphne Aluta, Jean Caragonne, Conrado Contreras, Victoria Corona Vega, Gustel Foust, Adriana de Rocio García Hernández, Bill Gentes, Petie Jensen, Oliver Johnson, Carla Manger, James Marthai, Dionicio Morales López, Edith Morris, Bob Neathery, Brian Pimlott, Georg Rauch and Jesús Sánchez.

If you can add to this list, or supply images of other cards, please get in touch!

Examples of greetings cards published by Amigos de Salud.

Bruce Allen. Photograph.
Bruce Allen. Photograph.
Bruce Allen. Photograph.
Daphne Aluta. Los pastores.
Daphne Aluta. Los pastores.
Daphne Aluta. Los pastores.
Victoria Corona Vega. Ofreciendo flores a la Virgen, San-Antonio
Victoria Corona Vega. Ofreciendo flores a la Virgen, San-Antonio
Victoria Corona Vega. Ofreciendo flores a la Virgen, San Antonio
Gustel Foust. Street scene.
Gustel Foust. Street scene.
Gustel Foust. Street scene.
William Gentes. Canoa.
William Gentes. Canoa.
William Gentes. Canoa.
Petie Jensen. Ajijic plaza and chapel.
Petie Jensen. Ajijic plaza and chapel.
Petie Jensen. Ajijic plaza and chapel.
Oliver Johnson. Untitled (street musician).
Oliver Johnson. Untitled (street musician).
Oliver Johnson. Untitled (street musician).
Carla Manger. c 1988. Mercado en la plaza.
Carla Manger. c 1988. Mercado en la plaza.
Carla Manger. c 1988. Mercado en la plaza.
Carla Manger. 1982. La Quinta (Los Naranjitos), Jocotepec.
Carla Manger. 1982. La Quinta (Los Naranjitos), Jocotepec.
Carla Manger. 1982. La Quinta (Los Naranjitos), Jocotepec.
James Marthai. Ajijic.
James Marthai. Ajijic.
James Marthai. Ajijic.
Dionicio Morales. Calle Real.
Dionicio Morales. Calle Real.
Dionicio Morales. Calle Real.

Acknowledgment

  • My thanks to Joan Frost’s son, John Burdett Frost, and to writer Dale Hoyt Palfrey for supplying images and examples of many Amigos de Salud greetings cards.
Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.

Several chapters of Foreign Footprints in Ajijic: Decades of Change in a Mexican Village offer more details about the history of the artistic community in Ajijic and their support of educational and health initiatives in the area.

Sources

Guadalajara Reporter: 28 Sep 1974, 15; 27 Mar 1976, 23.

Comments, corrections and additional material are welcome, whether via comments or email.

Sep 052024
 

Making the rounds periodically on social media—and still prominent in web searches more than twenty years after it was written—the late Lawrence H. Freeman’s piece titled “The History of Lakeside” is, unfortunately, riddled with historical misconceptions and inaccuracies. The full text of the article is available on chapala.com and was recently reprinted on another Chapala-related site as “About Chapala Haciendas Fraccionamientos and Chapala, Axixic and the neighboring Ribera.

‘Larry’ Freeman (1936-2016) was born in Toronto, Canada. After gaining a degree in industrial design from the University of Toronto, Freeman moved to California in 1961 where he qualified as a lawyer in 1970. He worked in the legal field for two decades, including a spell as a deputy public defender. In retirement, Freeman lived part-time in Mexico, and worked as an archivist at Casa Na Bolom in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, and as a reference librarian and tour director at The Lake Chapala Society in Ajijic. “The History of Lakeside” is one of several articles he contributed to El Ojo del Lago. Freeman died in California in 2016.

My critique of Freeman’s article on lakeside history follows (quotes from the original in red):

Ajijic was originally named, in Nahuatl, the Aztec language, ‘Axixic, place where the water springs forth,’ commemorating the seven fresh-water wells that originally provided the water in this area.

There are several possible derivations of ‘Axixic.’ Whatever the derivation, water did not come from wells until relatively recently; it came from springs and the lake. There is no clear evidence for seven springs, though the idea is appealing, given the legend that the Mexica (direct ancestors of the Aztecs) were one of seven tribes occupying seven caves in a mythical place named Chicomoztoc.

Before the Spanish arrived, the indigenous Cocas were living at Cutzalán, now San Juan Cosala…. By the mid-fourteenth century, the Cocas’ burgeoning population caused them to form additional lakeside villages, including Axixic.

In the 1980s, ethnoarchaeologist Dr Carolyn Baus Czitrom showed that all the indigenous people living on the northern shore of Lake Chapala at the time of the conquest belonged to the Coca indigenous group, except for those living in San Juan Cosalá, Ajijic, San Antonio Tlayacapan and Chapala, who were Caxcan.

Ajijic was not formed in the mid-fourteenth century. It was founded in 1531 by Franciscan friar Martín de Jesús (or de la Coruña), who suggested to an indigenous group led by Xitomatl (later baptized Andrés Carlos) that they move their existing community to begin a new settlement, where water was more readily available, named Axixic [Ajijic].

The town of Chapala was founded in 1510, and Axixic followed when the Spanish under Captain Alonso de Avalos, a cousin of Hernan Cortes, arrived in 1523 and persuaded the Cocas to surrender and be baptized without a fight. He was given a royal grant and his cousin Saenz was given a grant for Ajijic.

It is true that the settlement of Chapala was founded before the arrival in the area (in 1530) of the Spanish conquistadors. I am unaware of any evidence supporting a date of 1510; Chapala was almost certainly founded far earlier.

The Olid Expedition, which reached the southern shores of Lake Chapala in about 1522, involved Fernando (sometimes Hernando) de Saavedra, the older brother of Alonso de Ávalos, who arrived in New Spain a year later. The two brothers were cousins of Hernán Cortés, who granted them (and a third relative who died shortly afterwards) the encomienda (the right to collect tributes and labor from indigenous inhabitants) for a large area, which included the southern shore of Lake Chapala, and later also the northern shore. After their partner’s death, the two brothers shared tribute payments from the encomienda. After Fernando’s death in 1535, his half-share reverted to the Spanish Crown. The encomienda system did not, strictly speaking, constitute a grant of either solo or joint ownership. The tributes supplied by Ajijic every 80 days consisted of blankets and items of clothing, cotton, fish and provisions.

It is nonsense to suggest that “his cousin Saenz was given a grant for Ajijic.” I know of no record of anyone named ‘Saenz’ ever owning any hacienda near Ajijic, though a Sebastian Sainz (note spelling) acquired the Hacienda El Cuije (which included land in and around Ajijic) in about 1900, following the murder of its former owner, Hans (‘Juan’) Jaacks. Sainz had no known familial connection to Hernán Cortés. Both Sebastian Sainz Peña (ca 1851-1927) and his wife, María Dolores Stephenson Zambrano (1869-1958) were born in Spain. They arrived in Mexico in the 1890s and soon amassed an extensive property portfolio in Ajijic and Chapala.

The first major building, which still exists, was a mill built in the 1530s on the site of the Posada Ajijic. A monastery on the corner of Hidalgo and Cinco de Mayo was founded in 1535 …

The building that was transformed (in the late 1930s) into Posada Ajijic was a mill (and taberna) but nowhere near as old as the sixteenth century. It was part of the Hacienda El Cuije, established in the nineteenth century. A more noteworthy building from the same era was the residence known as El Tejabán, (one block north of the current plaza) which belonged to Hans (‘Juan’) Jaacks, the owner of El Cuije. The ‘monastery’ was a friary, not a monastery.

By the early 1550s, the lakeside area came under the domination of the Spanish evangelists and they officially founded the city of Chapala in 1538, building the church in 1548.

As already noted, the settlement of Chapala was founded many years before the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors. Its first church was constructed in 1548, but was burned down in 1557, and its replacement was burned down in 1581. Chapala was officially designated a town in 1824 and a city in 1970.

Lakeside remained a quiet fishing and agricultural community, but in the late 1700s was ravaged by a plague that resulted in over 50,000 deaths in Nueva España.

Ravaged? Perhaps in some regions, but at Lake Chapala the plague of viruela (smallpox)  in the late 1700s peaked in 1780, when 80 lives were lost to the disease in the entire parish of Chapala.

Chapala was brought to new life by the 35-year presidency of Porfirio Diaz. It became the watering hole for the upper classes and boasted a railway and steamboat service…

Díaz’s influence played a part in—but was not responsible for—bringing ‘new life’ (tourism) to Chapala. The railway did not reach Chapala until 1920 (almost a decade after Díaz had entered exile in Europe), and it closed in 1926.

It was only in 1909 that the first motor car (named ‘Protos’) arrived in Chapala, but by 1910, a cobbled road connected Chapala to Guadalajara, and it was paved by 1937.

Many cars had been drive to Chapala before ‘Protos.’ Though ‘Protos’ was not the first motor car in Chapala, it did win a hill-climbing race there in 1909. The road between Guadalajara and Chapala was not cobbled by 1910; almost its entire length was dirt until much later.

Ajijic was discovered by European intellectuals and provided a refuge for those fleeing political prosecution [sic] after WWI.

This is a stretch. Only a handful of Europeans of any kind had ‘discovered’ Ajijic prior to the 1940s, and those who had were neither ‘intellectuals’ nor fleeing political persecution following WWI.

In 1925, D.H. Lawrence was writing “The Plumed Serpent” in Chapala.

D. H. Lawrence wrote his first draft of The Plumed Serpent in Chapala in 1923, not 1925.

… Nigel Millet was managing Posada Ajijic, and in the mid-30s, a gold rush transformed the town into a short frenzy of greed. That was soon over and Ajijic settled down again while Nigel Millet co-wrote “Village in the Sun” under the name of Dale [sic] Chandos. The other half of the team, Peter Lilley, then wrote “House in the Sun.”

There was no gold rush in the mid-1930s. Gold mining in the hills behind Ajijic began much earlier: by 1885 there were already thirty silver and gold mines in Ajijic. Production peaked in the first decade of the twentieth century, with occasional short-lived revivals thereafter. The pen-name used by Nigel Millett and Peter Lilley was Dane (not Dale) Chandos. There is no doubt in my opinion that both men wrote both books, with some revisions possibly made by a third man, Anthony Stansfeld. (For more about mining in Ajijic and about Dane Chandos, see Foreign Footprints in Ajijic.)

In the 1940s… there were 14 foreigners living here.

This number is often quoted. There were certainly fewer than 14 foreigners living in Ajijic in 1940, but many more than 14 for most of the decade.

In 1943, Neill James, a world-renowned travel writer, arrived in Ajijic to recover from serious injuries suffered while exploring a newly active volcano, Paracutín [sic], located near Pátzcuaro.

Neill James did arrive in Ajijic in 1943, to recuperate from two (not one) volcanic mishaps. She spent more time in hospital recovering from the first accident (on Mt. Popocatapetl) than she did following the incident at Paricutín.

She soon purchased the property where the Lake Chapala Society stands today, and never left until she died in 1994, just a few months short of her 100th birthday. Neill James was born in 1899 on a cotton plantation in Granada, Mississippi.

Nellie Neill James was not born in Granada, Mississippi, nor on a cotton plantation, and not in 1899. She was born in Gore Springs, Mississippi on 3 January 1895. Her family was far from wealthy; her father worked as a laborer in a saw mill.

She married and quickly divorced without children. In 1929 she left the work-a-day world to pursue a life as a pioneering adventurer, world-traveler, travel writer and novelist. Heroine of many adventures, including living among Asiatic primitives and being pursued and hounded across Asia by Japanese agents, she finally came to roost in Ajijic in 1942.

Except for her trip to Mexico (and holiday trips late in her life), her world travels as an adventurer came before her brief marriage (to Harold C. Campbell) in 1937, and not after. Neill James arrived in Ajijic in September 1943, not in 1942.

The building now housing the office, multi-cultural reading room and the reference portion of the library was built and operated as a silkworm factory and a salesroom until a freak cold snap killed the silkworms.

Of the many possible reasons suggested for the demise of her silkworm business, James herself placed the blame squarely on a single negligent employee. (See chapter 34 of Foreign Footprints in Ajijic.)

As she settled in, Ms. James built a house for her sister on the property, and deeded several parcels to her friends to build some of the picturesque houses that can be seen on the edges of our grounds.

This is fanciful. For the history of how Neill James acquired her extensive estate in Ajijic, see Foreign Footprints in Ajijic, chapter 14.

Neill James articles in Life and other U.S. magazines inspired the first wave of gringo visitations. Her book, Dust On My Heart, a personal view of early lakeside life.

Life never published anything by Neill James. Her only published article, “I live in Ajijic,” appeared in Modern Mexico, the periodical of the Mexican Chamber of Commerce in New York. Dust On My Heart was not her “personal view of early lakeside life.” Of the forty short chapters in Dust on My Heart, only the final two—“Ajijic” and “Adobe Hut in Heaven”—relate to the Lake Chapala area.

Ms. James opened her first public library for Mexican children in 1945 and it has continued uninterrupted, though in different locations, since then.

Neill James’ first children’s library in Ajijic was not opened in 1945, but some years later, in about 1953.

By 1983, the Lake Chapala Society moved to the present location and in 1985, Neill James donated her property to the Society.

James had graciously allowed the Lake Chapala Society to use parts of her property from 1983. The legal transfer of her property to the society was completed in January 1990. See chapter 24 of Foreign Footprints in Ajijic for details.

In 1989, all the streets were torn up to lay sewers, and the 460-year-old cobblestones were tossed to one side …

There is no evidence that Ajijic had any cobblestone streets prior to the end of the nineteenth century.

Rumors abound that Ajijic and the Guadalajara Airport were the nexus of a recent well-known ‘undercover’ CIA operation… known as the Iran-Contra connection of President Ronald Reagan and Oliver North.

Ajijic did indeed play a part in this operation. Terry Reed had an active role in the Iran-Contra affair established a machine-tool business in Guadalajara as a front for the “guns-in, drugs-out” operation in Central America. Reed, who lived in Ajijic from 1986 to 1988, coauthored Compromised: Clinton, Bush and the CIA, an international best seller.

It is clearly high time that someone writes a more realistic short history of Ajijic. My vote for this project goes to Dale Hoyt Palfrey!

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.

Foreign Footprints in Ajijic: Decades of Change in a Mexican Village offers more details about the twentieth-century history of Ajijic.

References

  • Carolyn Baus de Czitrom. 1982. Tecuexes y Cocas. Dos grupos de la región de Jalisco en el siglo XVI. Mexico City: INAH.
  • Lawrence H. Freeman. 2001. “The History of Lakeside.” El Ojo del Lago, Vol 17, Number 6 (February 2001).
  • Daniel I. Becerra de la Cruz. 2021. “La viruela de 1780 y 1798 en la parroquia de Chapala.” Estudios Jaliscienses (El Colegio de Jalisco), febrero de 2021, 24-34.
  • Neill James. 1945. “I Live in Ajijic.” Modern Mexico (New York: Mexican Chamber of Commerce), Vol. 18 #5 (October 1945), 23-28.
  • Neill James. 1946. Dust on my Heart: Petticoat Vagabond in Mexico. New York: Charles Scribner’s.
  • Terry Reed and John Cummings. 1995. Compromised: Clinton, Bush and the CIA. Clandestine Publishing.

Comments, corrections and additional material are welcome, whether via the comments feature or email.

Aug 282024
 

Artist Daphne Aluta (1919-2017) moved to Ajijic with her then husband Mario Aluta in the late 1960s, and lived there for about twenty years. In September 1985 she was the first female artist ever to have her work featured in the Chapala area monthly El Ojo del Lago; all previous art profiles had highlighted male artists.

Daphne Aluta. Portrait. Courtesy of Ricardo Santana.

Daphne Aluta. Portrait. Date unknown. Courtesy of Ricardo Santana.

Born Daphne Craig on 24 June 1919 in Detroit, Michigan, she grew up in Evanston, Illinois, before studying at Cranbrook School for Girls and then graduating from the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.

In 1937 she married Richard Flu; the couple had a daughter, Stephanie. In 1941 Daphne married Frank L Greer and moved to Santa Barbara, California; they had two daughters and a son. Frank was an architect (he designed various public buildings in Santa Barbara) and it was only natural that Daphne, who loved sculpture as much as painting, began to help design homes.

Her marriage to Turkish painter and architect Mario Aluta, 15 years her senior, is recorded as taking place in Nevada in 1960. It is assumed that Daphne exhibited in the US before moving to Mexico, but no details of such exhibits are currently known.

During her time in Ajijic, in addition to painting and sculpting, Aluta designed and built several homes in the village. Aluta lived at various addresses in Ajijic, including Juan Alvarez 44 and, in 1971, Encarnación Rosas #20.

Daphne Aluta. Ajijic. Reproduced by kind permission of Ricardo Santana.

Daphne Aluta. Ajijic. Date unknown. Reproduced by kind permission of Ricardo Santana.

As an artist, her group exhibitions in Mexico included the Casa de la Cultura in Guadalajara (1970); the “Fiesta de Arte” held at a private home in Ajijic (15 May 1971); the ex-Convento del Carmen in Guadalajara (1980); the Club Campestre La Hacienda (1985) on the main Guadalajara-Chapala highway; and the “Help Save Lake Chapala” exhibit in Mexico City (1988).

The Lakeside artists exhibiting with Aluta at the Casa de la Cultura Jalisciense show in 1970 included Eunice Hunt; Peter Paul Huf; Mario Aluta; Chester Vincent; Bruce Sherratt and Lesley Jervis Maddock (aka Lesley Sherratt). Aluta’s acrylics were described as “strong and vibrant.”

Undated. Nude. Photo courtesy of Tom Thompson.

Daphne Aluta. Undated. Nude. Photo courtesy of Tom Thompson.

At the Fiesta de Arte in 1971, Aluta’s work hung alongside art by Mario Aluta; Beth Avary; Charles Blodgett; Antonio Cárdenas; Alan Davoll; Alice de Boton; Robert de Boton; Tom Faloon; John Frost; Fernando García; Dorothy Goldner; Burt Hawley; Eunice Hunt; Peter Paul Huf; Lona Isoard, Michael Heinichen; John Maybra Kilpatrick; Gail Michel; Bert Miller; Robert Neathery, John Peterson, Stuart Phillips; Hudson Rose; Mary Rose; Jesús Santana; Walt Shou; Frances Showalter; Sloane; Eleanor Smart; Robert Snodgrass; and Agustín Velarde.

Painters from the Chapala area exhibiting alongside Aluta at the ex-Convento del Carmen in 1980 included Georg Rauch; Eleanor Smart; Betty Warren; Stefan Lökös and Gustel Foust.

At the Club Campestre La Hacienda exhibition in 1985, Aluta’s fellow artists included Eugenia Bolduc, Jean Caragonne, Donald Demerest, Laura Goeglein, Hubert Harmon, B. R. Kline, Jo Kreig, Carla W. Manger, Emily Meeker, Sydney Moehlman, Xavier Pérez, Tiu Pessa, De Nyse Turner Pinkerton and Eleanor Smart.

Other artists in the 1988 Mexico City exhibit included Nancy Bollembach, Luisa Julian, Conrado Contreras, Rick Ledwon, Georg Rauch, Enrique Velázquez and Laura Goeglin.

Daphne’s fourth husband was Colin MacDougall. They married in Ajijic in 1974, in a small ceremony at the home of Sherm and Adele Harris, who were then managing the Posada Ajijic.

After living in Mexico for 30 years, Aluta returned to the U.S. in 2000, to make her home in Ventura, California, where she died seventeen years later on 6 July 2017.

Note

This is a revised and expanded version of a post first published 23 June 2016.

Sources

  • Santa Barbara News-Press, 11-15 July 2017.
  • Guadalajara Reporter: 13 June 1970; 27 Jun 1970; 3 April 1971; 31 August 1974.
  • El Informador: 5 June 1970; 4 May 1985; 26 January 1980.
  • El Ojo del Lago, September 1985.

Sombrero Books welcomes comments, corrections or additional material related to any of the writers and artists featured in our series of mini-bios. Please email us or use the comments feature at the bottom of individual posts.

Aug 222024
 

In 1905 keen traveler Leland Ives published an article about Chapala in Four Track News, a periodical begun a few years earlier by the New York Central Railroad. The short article contains a memorable description of his stage coach ride from Atequiza to Chapala, and all manner of valuable nuggets of information which indicate Ives was a keen observer and listener. Ives had traveled fairly widely in Spanish-speaking countries before visiting Mexico, so (unlike most modern tourists) could readily manage the language barrier.

Ives took the train from Guadalajara to Atequiza. On stepping down from the train, he remarks that

generally it isn’t every day that the tourist can taste the joys and miseries of coach travel; but the fourteen-mile journey to Lake Chapala is the genuine article…. The roof of the huge box is piled high with baggage, freight and mail, and [three?] lucky passengers fill a seat on deck behind the driver, while inside eight others lurch around hanging to straps.”

In addition to observing closely the attire of the driver and his assistant, Ives had a keen eye for the behavior of the mules pulling the stage, summarizing their lack of discipline by commenting, “If they have ever been broken, their tuition fails to show.”

When they finally entered the village, and the stage coach driver was “urging the mules to a final gallop,” Chapala appeared to be half asleep:

The village isn’t much. There is a good hotel which is the terminus of the route; across the way a typical native inn, a remarkable stately church, and a plaza shaded by sour orange trees [while] along the lakefront in the outskirts are residences built as recreation retreats by merchants in Guadalajara and Mexico City, and one at least belongs to a foreign [family].”

At the hotel, Ives scanned the list of guests, but recognized few of the names “in the hotel register, for Chapala is yet but little known. Until within a very few years it lay nearly eight hundred miles from any railway, and while explorers and geographers have long been acquainted with it, tourists are but just finding out how attractive it is.”

Ives then turned his attention to the local fishermen and the various kinds of boats on the lake. Making regular trips between Ocotlán and Chapala was:

a gasoline launch which was brought from “the states” on a flat-car, and plies [the waters] regularly in charge of its owner, a young Canadian. Off the stone pier a little steamer rides at anchor, which was packed piecemeal over the mountains from San Blas on the Pacific, long before the advent of railroads. “

The “gasoline launch” Ives refers to is almost certainly the Carlota, brought by the Crompton brothers from Canada when they moved to Chapala in 1900. They also brought a 30-seat “electrical yacht” named Carmelita, which made regular runs two or three times a week between Chapala, Ocotlán, La Palma and Tuxcueca to support the booming Hotel Arzapalo, with pleasure trips to Mezcala Island on Sundays. The brothers sold their launches to the Lake Chapala Navigation Company (managed by Julio Lewels) in 1904. (See chapter 2 of If Walls Could Talk.)

Ives’ description of a “little steamer” appears to conflate two distinct vessels. The first steamboat on the lake, launched in 1868, was the Libertad, built in California and carried in pieces over the mountains to the lake. However, it had capsized near Ocotlán in 1889 with a heavy loss of life; it was later refloated, renamed and sent to Lake Pátzcuaro. In the interim, several other small steamships had taken its place, including the Chapala, launched in 1881 and the San Francisco.

Who was Leland Howard Ives?

Leland Howard Ives, the son of John and Wealthy Sage (Merwin) Ives, was born on 16 October 1859 in Meriden, Connecticut. Ives and his parents were active lifelong members of the First Baptist Church Society of Meriden.

Ives entered Yale in the class of 1883 but never graduated. He worked for a dry goods commission house in New York City from 1885 to 1889, before leaving for Europe, to meet friends in London and tour the UK, France and Belgium for six weeks. He later shared his talents and financial acumen with various businesses in his home town of Meriden.

Leland Howard Ives.

Leland Howard Ives.

Ives traveled widely from a relatively young age, and submitted his accounts of his travels to his local newspaper in Meriden and to magazines such as Outside and Four Track News. Ives also gave lectures about his foreign travels in New York City and elsewhere, illustrated with his own photographs.

He had lengthy trips to the West Indies (1892), Cuba (1893), the north coast of South America (1895) and Puerto Rico (1899).

It is not entirely clear when he visited Chapala. He was definitely in Mexico City in 1901, with plans to also visit Tampico, but there is no record of his time in Chapala beyond the article he published in February 1905 in Four Track News, which was clearly a very personal account. The April 1905 issue had another piece by Ives titled “After Ducks in Mexico.”

Ives’ mother died in 1914 and his father died the following year.

On 12 May 1920, Ives married Mrs. Florence W. Fisk; the couple continued to travel regularly. Ives had no children, and after he died on 31 January 1943, his assets were held in trust for the benefit of his wife and his sister. Following the deaths of his wife in 1950 and his sister in 1951, Ives’ sizable estate was shared between various charitable organizations.

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.

My 2022 book Lake Chapala: A Postcard History uses reproductions of more than 150 vintage postcards to tell the incredible story of how Lake Chapala became an international tourist and retirement center.

Sources

Comments, corrections and additional material are welcome, whether via the comments feature or email.

Aug 152024
 

This is the third in a mini series identifying some examples of photo identification errors related to the Lake Chapala area.

Mexico’s National Photo Archive (Fototeca Nacional) includes this unattributed photo of ships and boats on Lake Chapala captioned as “Lago de Chapala, Jalisco, 1925-1930.” The photo was used in an internal 2004 INAH newsletter (later published online) which had numerous illustrations related to fishing.

Unattributed photo of ships and boats on Lake Chapala. Catalogued in National Photo Archive as "Lago de Chapala, Jalisco, 1925-1930. © SINAFO-Fototeca Nacional."

Unattributed photo of ships and boats on Lake Chapala. Catalogued in National Photo Archive as “Lago de Chapala, Jalisco, 1925-1930. © SINAFO-Fototeca Nacional.”

Something isn’t quite right here. Lake Chapala did have a sizable fishing fleet during much of the twentieth century. The catch of highly prized whitefish peaked at 150 tons in 1946, and the charal catch peaked in excess of 3000 tons in 1968. But the ships and boats depicted above are very different to the various types of fishing vessels and cargo-carrying boats normally associated with the lake. Several appear to be large steamships. While Chapala did have numerous steamships plying the lake waters at one time or other between the 1860s and 1940s, it never had this many at one time—or any as large as the larger ones in the photograph.

By way of comparison, here is an image (photographer and date unknown) of the vapor Libertad on Lake Chapala. Libertad was the first iron steamship built in San Francisco, and the first steamship launched on Lake Chapala (in 1868) and was, to the best of my knowledge, the largest steamship ever to grace the lake. The Libertad capsized, with the loss of 28 lives, near Ocotlán on 14 March 1889.

Vapor Libertad (photographer and date unknown)

Vapor Libertad. Photographer unknown. Date: c 1885?

In the absence of knowing when the National Photo Archive image was taken, or who the photographer was, it may prove impossible to give it an accurate caption, but… Chapala between 1925 and 1930? I don’t think so.

Source

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.

My 2022 book Lake Chapala: A Postcard History uses reproductions of more than 150 vintage postcards to tell the incredible story of how Lake Chapala became an international tourist and retirement center. Chapter 8 is devoted to Fishing and Environmental Change.

Comments, corrections or additional material related to any of the writers and artists featured in our series of mini-bios are welcome, whether via comments feature or email.

Aug 082024
 

One remarkable Chapala man, Isidoro Pulido, had close links to several of the most important writers and artists ever to live and work at Lake Chapala. Isidoro was put in jail at the behest of English novelist D. H. Lawrence; he was befriended and employed by American poet Witter Bynner and taught to create near-perfect replicas of ancient archaeological pieces by American artist Everett Gee Jackson. In addition, he was immortalized in Arthur Davison Ficke’s novel, Mrs Morton of Mexico, and the central figure in a US newspaper column published in the 1960s, a decade after his death. How on earth did all this come about?

Though Isidoro (sometimes Ysidoro) Pulido Rentería was born in Tonalá on 17 April 1909, he spent virtually his entire life in Chapala. Isidoro, son of José Refugio Pulido and Clotilde Rentería, had just turned 14 when D H Lawrence and Witter Bynner visited Chapala in 1923, and belonged to a group of young people who hung out having fun at the Hotel Arzapalo and the main beach, hoping to receive tips in exchange for cleaning shoes and running errands. Unfortunately, they entered the hotel dining room once too often, and made more noise than Lawrence (or the Arzapalo’s then manager, photographer Winfield Scott) could tolerate. Lawrence complained, and Scott arranged for Isidoro and several of his friends to spend the next couple of nights in jail.

Leo Stanley. 1937. "Isidoro Pulido." Photo reproduced by kind permission of California Historical Society.

Leo Stanley. 1937. “Ysidoro and his monos.” By kind permission of California Historical Society.

Bynner, a witness to all this, thought that Lawrence had overreacted to the boys, and failed to appreciate their youthful enthusiasm. He explained in his memoir Journey with Genius how:

Ysidoro… had come to regard himself as our special room attendant, being adept not only at shoeshining but at filling missions for us with tailor, seamstress, grocer, post office, or bar. In fact we had soon set up a small bar of our own in our front room at the hotel and taught him various skills for mixing drinks. Tequila (with lemon, orange, or grapefruit and mineral water) was the staple.”

Bynner took such a shine to Isidoro that he kept in touch with him over the years and, after buying a house in Chapala in 1940, hired Isidoro (by then married) to be his aide, and to help run the household, mix cocktails and serve meals. Bynner later even built a home for Isidoro’s family.

Another local youngster, José Orozco Aguilar, also benefited from Bynner’s generosity. José originally worked for one of Bynner’s friends, a fellow Harvard graduate named Stanley Lothrop, who had worked for Louis Comfort Tiffany before retiring to Chapala in 1942. After Lothrop’s death a couple of years later, Bynner looked after José and, according to Joe Weston, “taught him how to cook, bartend and handle formal dinner parties, in short all the skills of a majordomo.”

Back in 1923… no sooner had D H Lawrence and his entourage left Chapala than a pair of young American art students—Everett Gee Jackson and Lowell Houser—arrived in town and rented the same house. Jackson and Houser lived at Lake Chapala for several years, and Jackson amassed a collection of small figurines that he analyzed in an article in the 1940s. In his memoir It’s a Long Road to Comondú, Jackson explains how he also taught Isidoro the skills needed to make high quality reproductions of ancient artifacts. And, more than twenty years later, when he returned to Chapala, Jackson was delighted to find that,

Isidoro had become a maker of candy and a dealer in pre-Columbian art in the patio of his house on Los Niños Héroes Street. I did not teach him to make candy, but when he was just a boy I had shown him how he could reproduce those figurines he and Eileen [Jackson’s wife] used to dig up back of Chapala. Now he not only made them well, but he would also take them out into the fields and gullies, bury them, and then dig them up in the company of American tourists, who were beginning to come to Chapala in increasing numbers. Isidoro did not feel guilty when the tourists bought his works; he believed his creations were just as good as the pre-Columbian ones.”

Whether or not anyone really needed Jackson’s help to produce ‘fake’ antiquities is debatable, given that there is plenty of evidence that, by the 1920s, some people were already making—and selling—genuine-looking artifacts to unsuspecting foreign visitors.

By 1930, Isidoro had married and was living with his wife, Refugio Sotelo, on Calle de los Placeres in Chapala, next door to his parents. Calle de los Placeres is a short street that runs from Avenida Hidalgo (the highway to Ajijic) up the lower slopes of Cerro San Miguel. Two years later, Isidoro and his wife were heartbroken when their daughter Estela fell ill and died before her first birthday.

Bynner had continued to revisit Chapala periodically, and he rented a house there for several months in 1934, over the 34-35 winter, and invited close friends—poet Arthur Davison Ficke and his wife, Gladys Brown—to join him. The visit gave Ficke the subject matter for his one and only novel Mrs Morton of Mexico, in which most of the characters are closely based on real people who lived in Chapala at the time. Isidoro, described as a carpenter named “Ysidoro Juarez,” plays an important cameo role in the novel in connection with “The Holy Painting of Jocotepec.”

Leo Stanley. 1937. "Isidoro Pulido family." By kind permission of California Historical Society.

Leo Stanley. 1937. “His family.” Family of Isidoro Pulido. By kind permission of California Historical Society.

In 1937, Californian prison doctor Leo Stanley visited Chapala. He became sufficiently interested in ancient artifacts to seek out a local to help him find and excavate likely locations. He visited Ysidoro’s hut on the side of Cerro San Miguel, and found Ysidoro, “perhaps twenty-five years of age,” to be bright, intelligent and extremely cordial. Isidoro showed Stanley all manner of stone idols, figures, toads, even cattle, and various letters from the tourists who had visited him, including Witter Bynner and a Mrs W. F. Anderson, of Monterey, California.

Isidoro’s wife had just given birth to the couple’s fourth child, but was far from well. Stanley returned the next day to examine her, and offer advice about her care, but sadly, she died a month later.

Stanley took several photos of Isidoro and his account of their joint search for idols—and of their eventual ‘success’—is an entertaining read.

Bynner bought a house in Chapala in 1940. Three years later, he was in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and about to set out for Chapala with his partner Bob Hunt, when he received a letter from Isidoro, reporting that there had been a big earthquake, felt everywhere from Mexico City to Chapala:

“We are scared now, because this morning, early about three o’clock, we heared [sic] many thunders under the earth. It is eight and the thunders are heared yet. Yesterday about the same time we had an earthquake. Many people got up immediately and ran out of the houses. All the dogs in the town barked and the hens fled from their roosts.”

Fortunately, Bynner’s vacation home survived without any serious damage.

In the 1950s, Texas-based journalist Kenneth McCaleb lived in Chapala for several years. In a newspaper column some years later, McCaleb recalled how he had known a very good faker of antiquities in Chapala, named Isidoro, who “specialized in the familiar pre-Columbian ‘primitive’ ceramic figurines of ancient Mexico.” While the aging process was a secret, Isidoro would guide customers to “places where, after some healthful exercise, he dug up his own archaeological objects.”

McCaleb was prone to some embellishment for journalistic impact, as emerges from his account of Isidoro’s demise:

Something of a ladies’ man, Isidoro was on a trip to Manzanillo in a gay mixed company of friends, when he died. Burial is mostly on the spot in Mexico and his friends, unwilling to see him laid to rest far from home (Manzanillo is in the state of Colima), hit upon a plan. They sat him up in the back seat of his car and drove him to Chapala, where his widow, Carmen, saw to it that he was properly interred.”

In fact, the reality, based on the official registration of Isidoro’s death, is far more mundane. Isidoro may have been in Manzanillo but died in a hospital in Autlán on 29 August 1956.

It is truly remarkable that a single Chapala resident named Isidoro Pulido, whose adventurous and humble life lasted less than half a century, links together some of the most significant authors and artists ever associated with Lake Chapala.

Isidoro Pulido Rentería (1909-1956): Que en paz descansa.

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.

Several chapters of Foreign Footprints in Ajijic: Decades of Change in a Mexican Village offer more details about the history of the artistic community at Lake Chapala.

Acknowledgment

My sincere thanks to Frances Kaplan, Reference & Outreach Librarian of the California Historical Society, and to the California Historical Society for permission to reproduce the images used in this post.

Sources

  • Witter Bynner. 1951. Journey with Genius: Recollection and Reflections Concerning The D.H. Lawrences. New York: The John Day Company.
  • Arthur Davison Ficke. 1939. Mrs Morton of Mexico. New York: Reynal & Hitchcock.
  • Everett Gee Jackson. 1987. It’s a Long Road to Comondú. Texas A&M University Press.
  • Kenneth McCaleb. 1965. “Conversation Piece.” Corpus Christi Times, 27 Jan 1965, 14.
  • Santa Fe New Mexican: 11 Mar 1943, 3.
  • Leo L. Stanley. 1937. “Mixing in Mexico.” (2 vols). Leo L. Stanley Papers, MS 2061, California Historical Society.
  • Joe Weston. 1972. “Lakeside Look”, Guadalajara Reporter, 10 June 1972, 11-12, 27.

Comments, corrections and additional material are welcome, whether via comments or email.

Aug 012024
 

Canadian teacher, photographer and social activist Jean (‘Jackie’) Hartley lived in Jocotepec for several years at the start of the 1980s. She is still remembered in the Lake Chapala area today because she and a friend, Roma Jones, co-founded the Lakeside School for the Deaf, now the School for Special Children, located in Jocotepec:

In the summer of 1979, Jackie and Roma, then in their late 50s, drove a camper van from Vancouver Island, British Columbia, to Mexico. Arriving in the town of Jocotepec (population 9000), on the shores of beautiful Lake Chapala, they decided to spend their retirement years there, in leisurely pursuit of their artistic interests: painting, photography, crafts and woodworking. These dreams were never realized; instead, their waking hours became entirely focused on meeting the needs of disadvantaged Mexican children.”
– Gwen Chan Burton, New Worlds for the Deaf.

Within a few months of arriving, and despite no experience of deaf education, Jackie, a qualified primary school teacher, and Roma had started to teach two local deaf children. Their success was evident, and the number of deaf children seeking help grew rapidly.

When Jackie and Roma returned to Canada in 1986, the support system they had established, and the teachers they had hired, ensured that the school continued to grow, barely missing a beat. The history of this pioneering and successful project, with its many highs and some lows, is candidly related in New Worlds for the Deaf.

These photographs taken by Jackie, some of them printed as greetings cards, are the only ones known to have survived to today. Signed NEJH, they were presumably taken in Jocotepec between 1979 and 1986.

Jackie Hartley. c 1980. Photograph

Jackie Hartley. c 1980. Untitled photograph (Child in shop doorway).

Jackie Hartley. c 1980. Photograph

Jackie Hartley. c 1980. Untitled photograph (Child in doorway).

Jackie Hartley. c 1980. Photograph

Jackie Hartley. c 1980. Untitled photograph (Young girl).

Jackie Hartley. c 1980. Photograph

Jackie Hartley. c 1980. Untitled photograph, damaged. (Young girls with bird).

Jackie Hartley. c 1980. Photograph

Jackie Hartley. c 1980. Untitled photograph (Shoeshine boy).

Jackie Hartley. c 1980. Photograph

Jackie Hartley. c 1980. Untitled photograph (Burro with load).

Jackie Hartley. c 1980. Photograph

Jackie Hartley. c 1980. Untitled photograph (Fisherman and boat on shore).

Jackie Hartley. c 1980. Photograph

Jackie Hartley. c 1980. Untitled photograph (Elderly woman).

During her life,

Jackie had taught primary school students, including many indigenous children, for several years in British Columbia before bringing up her own four children. After her pharmacist husband died, Jackie had spent six months in Europe studying art before she journeyed to Mexico.” – Guadalajara Reporter

Jackie, born in about 1921, died in Victoria, British Columbia, on 24 January 1999.

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.

Sources

Comments, corrections and additional material are welcome, whether via the comments feature or email.

Jul 252024
 

The very famous American author James Michener (1907-1997) wrote more than forty books, of varying quality, in his lengthy writing career, including Mexico, a sweeping historical novel published in 1992. He began writing Mexico in 1961, but then abandoned the idea (or the manuscript was lost, depending on who’s telling the story) for about thirty years, before deciding to complete it. Shortly after its publication, Michener also released My Lost Mexico, giving his version of why and how he wrote the book’s first draft, why he’d abandoned it, and why and how it was eventually resurrected and completed.

Michener-Mexico-cover

According to American historian John Mason Hart, in his epic tome of 600+ pages Empire and Revolution: The Americans in Mexico Since the Civil War, Michener visited Chapala in the 1930s:

“In the 1930s James Michener resided at Lake Chapala, where he became fast friends with D. H. Lawrence and a small group of largely American writers then living by the lake. Lawrence was working on his famous novel The Plumed Serpent. The fledgling Michener attempted his own essay at the time, which he called “Mexico,” but deemed it his worst writing effort and shelved it. Fifty years later, I argued with him that the artist should not be the critic and that he should publish it for posterity. Unfortunately, his negative view of the manuscript proved correct.” (The endnote attached to this text is “Hart interview with James Michener, July 1985, Austin, Texas.”)

I have no idea what Michener actually told Hart during the interview, but clearly the first sentence is wildly inaccurate. Lawrence only visited Lake Chapala in 1923, when Michener would have been only 16 years old. Lawrence’s first visit to Chapala lasted about ten weeks from May to July 1923, and he returned to Chapala for a single day on 21 October that year. And, given that Lawrence died in Europe in 1930, the idea that Michener met Lawrence anywhere, let alone Chapala, in the 1930s is entirely fanciful!

Elsewhere, Michener himself has written that he spent three summers in Mexico in the 1930s, from 1936 to 1938 inclusive, while teaching in Colorado. In those years, he met Mexican bullfighters, ‘traveled the bullfight circuit’ and ‘traveled widely throughout Mexico.’ He even submitted a ‘compact novel on bullfighting’ to The MacMillan Publishing Company in 1937, but they weren’t interested. When Michener and his wife returned to Mexico in late 1959, it was to spend time in Mexico City and Guanajuato to research his next major book, but shelved the project in 1961 because of doubts about its structure, and some stinging initial criticism from Bennett Cerf, the then president of Random House. The draft lay unloved in a box until reemerging thirty years later.

It is possible that Michener visited Chapala, but IF he did, his visit was only very brief and has left no known footprint. There is no mention of Chapala in My Lost Mexico, and no indication whatsoever that the lakeside area would ever have appealed to Michener as possible background, inspiration or setting for a novel.

[Sadly, equally suspect, as I’ve written elsewhere is Hart’s account of the chronology and family of the New Orleans poet Mary Ashley Townsend, who had a genuinely close connection to Chapala in the second half of the 1890s, and was one of the first Americans to ever own a house there.]

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.

Several chapters of Foreign Footprints in Ajijic: Decades of Change in a Mexican Village offer more details about the history of the artistic community in Ajijic.

Sources

  • James Mason Hart. 2002. Empire and Revolution: The Americans in Mexico Since the Civil War. University of California Press, page 398.
  • James A Michener. 1992. Mexico: a novel. Random House.
  • James A Michener. 1992. My Lost Mexico. State House Press.

Comments, corrections and additional material are welcome, whether via comments or email.

Jul 182024
 

Why has it taken me so long to write about U.S.-born photographer C. B. Waite and his important contribution to documenting Mexico at the start of the twentieth century? The main challenge has been to unravel the discrepancies and inconsistencies in most previous accounts of his life and work. So, before examining Waite’s major contributions to documenting Mexican history, let’s get some of the more common and egregious misunderstandings out of the way once and for all.

First, C. B. Waite (who signed his work “Waite Photo”) is Charles Betts Waite (1861-1927), not Charles Burlingame Waite, as erroneously claimed in 2007 in Casanova and Konzevik’s major book about Mexican photographers, and—as recently as 2016—in an exhibition catalog published by Mexico’s National University, UNAM. (For the record, Charles Burlingame Waite (1824-1909) was an American writer and judge.)

Secondly, our Charles Waite did not marry “at age 35″ and then move to Mexico “in 1896 with wife and two daughters, Helen and Mary,” as claimed by some, including Francisco Montellano. Charles Betts Waite’s first wife was Alice A. Ironmonger; their only child was Hazel Pearl Waite, born in Los Angeles on 15 June 1885. Waite was on his own when he moved to Mexico in 1897. Three years later he married his second Alice—Alice Mary Cooley (1866–1923)—in Quincy, Illinois, and the new couple made their home in Mexico City.

Thirdly, Waite’s brother was not the “William Waite” murdered on a plantation near Veracruz in April 1912, as sometimes claimed. While C. B. Waite’s own father was, coincidentally, also named William, there is no known familial connection to the man killed in Mexico. Waite’s (only) brother was Frank Dawson Waite (1854–1927), a newspaperman associated with the San Diegan and the San Diego Sun, and considered “one of the ablest and most respected editorial writers in Southern California.”

To add to the confusion, Waite has often been credited with photographs taken by other photographers working in Mexico at the same time. I examine the background and reasons for this in a separate post: Who gets the credit? Charles Betts Waite or Winfield Scott?

Waite’s pre-Mexico life

Charles Betts Waite was born in Ohio on 19 December 1861 to an English-born couple, William and Ann (née Dawson) Waite. On passport and consular documents, he usually named his birthplace as Plymouth, Ohio, but sometimes claimed Auburn Township in Crawford County, Ohio. Either way, he was apparently raised in Plymouth. But, by June 1881, shortly before his 20th birthday, he had moved to California and was working with photographer Henry Ellis Coonley in the San Diego region. He married his first wife, Alice Aldelaid Ironmonger (1860-1948), in 1883. By his late twenties, Waite was credited for photographs published in the San Diego Union and was apparently working as a view photographer for Burdick and Company in Los Angeles.

During the 1890s, Waite’s photographs of ranches and landscapes in Southern California appeared in the Los Angeles-based magazine Land of Sunshine, and he was taking commissions from railroad companies, including the Santa Fe, Los Angeles Terminal, and Mount Lowe Railways. His 1896 voter registration in California puts him at 5’6″ tall, with blue eyes, dark hair, and living at 8 Stockton Street in Los Angeles.

Multiview postcard published by Juan Kaiser. Photos by C. B. Waite. Mailed 1902.

C. B. Waite. Three views of Lake Chapala. Postcard published by Juan Kaiser c 1901, mailed 1902.

In May 1897, Waite left the U.S. for Mexico City, where he established his first studio at Calle de Rosales #200, intending to supply photographs primarily for American magazines. He moved several times during his thirty or so years in the city, and later addresses included San Cosme #8 and San Juan de Letrán #3 and #5.

Within months of arriving in Mexico City, Waite was advertising his professional services, which included “Developing and printing for amateurs. Views, Groups, Interiors and Haciendas; also Flash Light Photos at night.” Waite certainly traveled widely throughout Mexico, taking photographs and undertaking commissions related to archaeology, scenery, tourism, and indigenous groups. By February 1900 he had amassed “a great variety of general views comprising more than 1000 subjects from all parts of the Republic.” On a short business trip to the U.S. that month, Waite personally delivered hundreds of 20x 24-inch prints of the Mexican National Railway to investors north of the border.

During the winter of 1900-01, Waite spent several weeks in southern Mexico, on a commission from the U.S.-owned Chiapas Rubber Company to document its operations, including land clearance, planting, rubber tree cultivation and tapping; these photos were intended to stimulate further foreign investment in the company and its activities. Waite also documented the cultivation and harvesting of coffee, cacao, tobacco and sugar cane.

These photo trips were not without their dangers. The Mexican Herald informed readers in early 1901 that, a few weeks earlier (during his Chiapas trip), Waite had suffered an accident while taking his photographic equipment up the Río Michol, and barely escaped with his life. The boat capsized and Waite and his boatman were thrown into the torrent. As they struggled to the shore, they managed to salvage a can of crackers and a valise which fortuitously contained a flask of cognac.

The disaster cost Waite his ‘small’ (6 ½ x8-inch format) camera in the raging waters, and he was left with only his ‘large’ (20×24-inch format) Rochester Optical camera, which weighed 100 kg in its traveling case. Undaunted, Waite carried on. At Palenque, it took a team of 12 local helpers an entire day to carry the camera the six miles (km) from the village to the ruins, where Waite then took 24 photos of the archaeological site, but only after his 12-man crew had spent eight days hacking down enough brush and foliage to guarantee the best views. Waite’s photos of Palenque were one of the highlights on Mexico’s stand at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York, that year.

That boat accident was not the only calamity to befall Waite in 1901. A few months later, he had an unexpected brush with Mexican police, accused of sending “indecent” material through the mail. A note in El Imparcial reported that one shipment from Waite contained photos of “miserable hovels” and “disheveled dirty women dressed in rags and men degenerated by every vice imaginable”. It was not impounded, but postcards in a second package showing “two dirty, absolutely wretched boys wracked with disease” were, and led to Waite’s arrest. Waite paid $400 pesos and was released from Belén prison three days later. Waite’s offense was not taking risqué “portraits of pubescent children” (for which Winfield Scott had been briefly imprisoned in California) but depicting the underbelly of Mexican society, which local authorities hoped would remain invisible to tourists.

Things brightened up in July 1901 when Waite was asked to visit Iguala, Guerrero, for a seance. Waite told a reporter afterwards that his photographic plates would convert skeptics: “I never had any faith in the spiritualist doctrine, but the appearance of scenes on the plates of my camera which I knew to have been absolutely clear… has aroused the curiosity of not only myself but many others who were previously skeptical on the subject.”

Waite’s major commissions that year included several for the government: Waite was tasked with producing about 1500 large format views of archaeological ruins in the republic for displays in the national museum, the precursor of Mexico’s world famous Museo Nacional de Antropología. And he was also hired by the government to supply photographs, including a series relating to bullfighting, for use on Mexico’s stand at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York.

Waite was back in the U.S. in 1902, “on business connected with his mining interests in Mexico. During the course of his travels through the interior as a landscape photographer, Mr Waite has secured control of a number of properties and the object of his visit to the U.S. is to place his property before American capitalists.” These mines were probably the small gold, silver and lead mines in Taxco, which he registered in his name in 1904. Not much more is known about them, so presumably they were never very successful.

C.B. Waite. View from the Carden residence, Chapala.

C.B. Waite. c 1898? Lake Chapala from Carden Residence (Villa Tlalocan), Chapala.

A few months after purchasing the photographic view business of Cox and Carmichael in 1904, Waite visited Atequiza hacienda, then owned by the Cuesta Gallardo family. From a photographic standpoint, this was a significant event, since it was here, eight years earlier, where French cinematographer Gabriel Veyre and his partner Claude Ferdinand Von Bernard filmed eight short movie films, some of the earliest movies shot anywhere in Mexico, depicting rural life, dances, cockfights and daily activities. Atequiza hacienda was also the birthplace of Octaviano de la Mora (1841-1921), arguably the most famous of all the early photographers based in Guadalajara.

Waite has left us several very interesting photographs of the hacienda, including views of the chapel, the hacienda store and main patio, the view of the main buildings from the mill, and a panoramic view of the hacienda in its idyllic setting. A year after being the official photographer documenting U.S. Secretary of State Elhu Root’s visit to Mexico in 1907, Waite revisited Atequiza to take photographs of the “La Florida” mansion and of hacienda’s orange groves.

Though Waite certainly participated as official photographer on several academic expeditions, I do not believe they include the two in 1908—led respectively by Norwegian anthropologist Carl Lumholtz and German ornithologist Hans Gadow—claimed in the timeline offered by Fuentes Rojas and her colleagues. First, there is no record of Lumholtz (author of Unknown Mexico, based on his first four trips to Mexico, all prior to 1900) visiting Mexico in 1908. And, secondly, Waite is never mentioned in Gadow’s 1908 book “Through Southern Mexico.” The confusion in the latter case perhaps arose because Gadow dedicated his book, “To C.B.”, but this is not a reference to C.B. Waite, but to pioneering American ornithologist Charles Beebe.

By 1910, Waite was a highly respected member of Mexico City’s foreign community and master of the Freemasons’ Toltec Lodge. Though Waite’s photographic activities were greatly reduced after the downfall of President Díaz, and the start of the revolution, he is known to have photographed Mexico’s centenary celebrations in 1910 and to have taken some photos related to the Maderista conspiracy.

Despite what some websites claim (eg. Getty Research Institute), there is no evidence that Waite left Mexico for the U.S. in 1913. On the contrary, Waite and his wife continued to live in Mexico City for the next decade, as is evidenced by his passport applications in 1918 and 1920.

His 1918 passport application included a lengthy affidavit explaining why he had lived outside the U.S. since May 1897:

“My mother died of consumption when I was four years old. My health failed when I was a young man and it was believed that I would die of consumption also and I was ordered to live in a warm climate by my physicians and came to Mexico where I established a Commercial Photography business, making a specialty of wholesale views of the country on a large scale. Illustrations for books and magazines of the interesting features of the country was an important part of my business.”

In the same application, Waite listed his visits to the U.S. since moving to Mexico: September 1898, January 1899, July 1899, February 190l, May 1902, July 1903, September 1903, December 1904, December 1906 and January 1912.

It was only after Alice’s death in the American Hospital in Mexico City in June 1923 that Waite opted to return to the U.S. to be closer to his daughter. He revisited Mexico with his daughter briefly in 1925, before dying in Los Angeles at the age of 65 on 22 March 1927.

Waite’s body of work

Landscapes, markets, railway lines, towns, people going about everyday tasks, farms, tropical crops, rural areas, fiestas in danger of extinction, major cities, bull fights, official events… Waite photographed all these and more, amassing a huge collection of images, which were widely published, including in the popular periodical El Mundo (later El Mundo Ilustrado), Modern Mexico, and as postcards issued by almost all the larger postcard publishers.

As early as 1901 the Sonora News Company was advertising that it sold “Waite’s Photographic Views” of “Native Types and Scenes.” This series included costumbrista images of men, women and children going about their everyday occupations and tasks. In 1902, Granat’s Mexican Specialty Store offered “Waite’s, Carmichel’s [sic] and Other Photographers’ Views of Mexico” for $2.25 a dozen.” Waite’s photos were also published and/or sold by Ruhland & Ahlschier; Latapi y Bert; J. G. Hatton; and Jacob Kalb of the Iturbide Curio Shop (all based in Mexico City), and Juan Kaiser, based in Guadalajara.

Waite’s photos were used to illustrate numerous books, including ornithologist Charles Beebe’s Two Bird-Lovers in Mexico (1905) and Percy F. Martin’s Mexico of the twentieth century (1907).

Waite. Church at Chapala. Published in Pauncefote (1900).

Waite. Church at Chapala, as published in Pauncefote, 1900.

In 1905, Waite applied for, and was granted, formal registration for ten photographs related to Lake Chapala, numbered 770-779. They included two photos of “the Carden residence” (Villa Tlalocan), built by British consul Lionel Carden in 1896. Three years later, Carden sold the property and moved to Cuba, so these two photos—and most probably the other eight—must be much earlier than 1905, and were probably taken at the end of the 1890s. Waite’s other photographs of Chapala in this group of ten, some of them published as postcards, included “Street in Chapala” “Cathedral, Chapala,” and “La Playa, Chapala.” Several of the photos, including the one of San Francisco Church (above) were first published in Harper’s Bazaar in 1900 to illustrate the Hon. Maud Pauncefote’s landmark article about Lake Chapala. (An extended excerpt of the article appears in chapter 46 of Lake Chapala Through the Ages.)

Waite later also registered a large number of images acquired from other photographers such as Winfield Scott, including many additional images of Chapala, as well as images of Prison Island (#2094), Tuxcueca (2177), Tizapan River (2182), Point Fuerte, Chapala (2196), Jamay (2840), Petetan (sic, 3056), Alacran Island (3058) and Cojumatlan (3062). It is likely that some or all of these were photographs taken by Scott.Examples of Waite’s work have found their way into numerous major U.S. museum and library collections, including The Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens; University of New Mexico’s Center for Southwest Research; Princeton University Library’s Collections of Western Americana; the Latin American Library of Tulane University; the Benson Latin American Collection, University of Texas at Austin; the Eugene P. Lyle, Jr. Photographs, University of Oregon; the DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University; and at the Tomás Rivera Library at University of California, Riverside.

Despite this, there have been relatively few exhibitions featuring his work apart from “Mexican Life and Culture During the Porfiriato: The Photography of C.B. Waite, 1898-1913″ at the Southwest Museum, Los Angeles, in 1991; “Mexico: From Empire to Revolution” at the Getty Institute in 2000-2001; and “Charles B. Waite. Primeras impresiones” at Galerías de la Antigua Academia de San Carlos in Mexico City in 2016.

Waite’s significant contribution to the history of photography in Mexico was recognized at the turn of the millennium by the nation’s postal authorities, when it issued a series of stamps and souvenir sheet to commemorate 100 years of photography in Mexico. A number of the stamps incorporated tiny versions of photographs taken by Waite into their design.

Servicio Postal Mexicano. (2000) 100 years of photography.

Servicio Postal Mexicano. (2000) 100 years of photography.

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.

Several chapters of Foreign Footprints in Ajijic: Decades of Change in a Mexican Village offer more details about the history of the artistic community at Lake Chapala.

Sources

  • Francisco Ballesteros Montellano. 1989. “C. B. Waite, profesional fotógrafo.” Tesis de Licenciatura, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.
  • ___ 1994. C. B. Waite, fotógrafo. Una mirada diversa sobre el México de principios del siglo XX. Mexico: Grijalba/CNCA.
  • ___ 1998. Charles B. Waite: la época de oro de las postales en México. Mexico: CONACULTA (Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y Las Artes).
  • Francisco Hernández. 2018. Diario sin fechas de Charles B. Waite (novel). USA: Almadia.
  • Benigno Casas. 2010. “Charles B. Waite y Winfield Scott: lo documental y lo estético en su obra fotográfica”. Dimensión antropológica, 48: 221–244.
  • Elizabeth Fuentes Rojas, Gabriela Prieto Soriano, Gabriela Vilches Larrea (coordinators). 2016. Charles B. Waite. Primeras impresiones. Mexico City: UNAM, Facultad de Artes y Diseño.
  • Rosa Casanova and Adriana Konzevik. 2007. Mexico: A Photographic History. Mexico: Editorial RM.
  • Clarence Alan McGrew. 1922. City of San Diego and San Diego County. The Birthplace of California. The American Historical Society. Vol I, p 289.
  • Hon. Maud Pauncefote. 1900. “Chapala the Beautiful.” Harper’s Bazar, Volume XXXIII #52, December 29, 1900. p 2231-3.
  • The Mexican Herald: 29 Aug 1897; 21 Feb 1900, 5; 18 Nov 1900, 6; 10 Feb 1901, 8; 30 March 1901, 8; 14 July 1901, 17; 28 July, 1901, 17; 19 Aug 1901, 8; 17 April 1902, 8; 18 Nov 1902; 3 March 1904, 7; 1 Sep 1904, 11; 24 Apr 1908; 27 June 1910; 18 August 1914, 5.
  • Diario Oficial de la Federación: 19 Jan 1905, 277-278-279; 17 March 1905, 300; 6 April 1905, 663; 13 April 1905; 14 Jan 1908, 150-151; 1 June 1908, 477-8; 14 July 1908, 202-3; 5 Oct 1908, 493.
  • The Two Republics: 5 Jan 1898, 6.
  • El Imparcial: 5 June 1901.
  • Jalisco Times: 10 Apr 1908.
  • El Universal, 20 May 1925.

Comments, corrections and additional material are welcome, whether via comments or email.

Jul 182024
 

Mexico’s National Photo Archive (Fototeca Nacional) combines the work of two photographers—Winfield Scott (1863-1942) and Charles Betts Waite (1861-1927)—into a single collection titled “C.B. Waite / W. Scott.” The two men did have several things in common: of similar age, both were prominent US-born photographers working in Mexico at the start of the twentieth century; both learned photography in California before working for railway companies; both married twice and had one daughter; and they both spent some time in jail on account of their chosen profession.

These two photographers were also interested in similar subject matter and traveled extensively in Mexico. The images they took, specifically tailored to an English-speaking audience, offered, in the words of photographic historian Rosa Casanova, “a ‘costumbrista’ vision of the landscape, monuments, and people of the country, producing an imagery that was also adopted in Mexico, thanks to their widespread circulation in the form of postcards.”

C.B. Waite. View from the Carden residence, Chapala.

C.B. Waite. c 1898. View from Villa Tlalocan (the Carden residence), Chapala.

Waite’s photos, like this one of “Lake Chapala, Méx. from Carden Residence” usually have a caption and credit added along their lower edge.

Waite, based in Mexico City, traveled by train, oxcart, stagecoach, mule and on foot to visit some of the country’s remotest regions, as far south as Chiapas. Scott, meanwhile, lived initially in Guanajuato and then settled in Jalisco, where he married into a family of modest means and established a small farm near Ocotlán on the northern shore of Lake Chapala. His travels were centered on the areas served by the Mexican Central Railway.

Winfield Scott. c 1897. Chapala lakeshore.

Winfield Scott. c 1897. Chapala lakeshore, as reproduced and attributed to Waite in Diario de campo (INAH, 2004). See Fig 1.1 of Lake Chapala: a postcard history.

The photo above, definitely by Winfield Scott, is one of those sometimes mistakenly attributed to C.B. Waite. Scott’s typical markings—caption and credit in black boxes—have been almost entirely erased.

So why is their work combined into a single collection in the Fototeca Nacional? Prior to 2005, the photographs had all been thought to be the work of Waite; the collection’s name was revised in 2005 when it was recognized that many of the photos had been taken by Scott. In part, this confusion arose because many images taken by Scott had subsequently been monetized by Waite.

Casanova and Konzevik argue that “ample evidence suggests that the two had some sort of agreement under which both of them used the material without distinguishing between them who had actually taken a specific photo.” Other researchers have assumed that, since photo piracy was relatively rife in Mexico at the time, Waite simply ignored Scott’s authorship and published Scott’s work as his own. (This idea was developed by novelist Fernando Hernández into his fictional work, Diario sin fechas de Charles B. Waite.)

The truth, at least in my opinion, is far more prosaic. There is no solid evidence that Scott and Waite ever collaborated in the manner suggested by Casanova and Konzevik. But contemporaneous newspaper records do show how Waite expanded his catalog of photographs by purchasing the work of smaller rival firms. In 1904, for example, Waite advertised that, “Having bought the photographic view business of Cox and Carmichael, any person desiring views from their negatives can obtain them from C. B. Waite, San Juan de Letrán No. 3.” Four years later, in 1908, Waite advertised in The Mexican Herald that he had acquired Scott’s photographs:

Having purchased the photographic view negatives of Mr. Winfield Scott of Ocotlán, Jalisco, all orders for his Types and Views of Mexico must now be sent direct to me. I now have the largest assortment of views of any one country in the world.”

Immediately after acquiring Scott’s photos, Waite formally registered his rights to them with the Mexican government. When republishing these photos, Waite generally blocked or edited out any previous captions or signature, and added his own statement of ownership, as was entirely within his rights. Hence, the confusion over the original authorship of individual photographs arose from a perfectly legal and normal commercial transaction, not one involving any subterfuge or trickery.

Among the images taken by Scott that Waite acquired and registered are numerous photographs related to Lake Chapala, including views of Prison Island (#2094), Tuxcueca (2177), Tizapan River (2182), Point Fuerte, Chapala (2196), Jamay (2840), Petetan (sic, 3056), Alacran Island (3058) and Cojumatlan (3062). It may not be possible to decide which of the two expert photographers took some of the photos currently in the Waite/Scott collection of the Fototeca Nacional, but I think it is possible to do so for those photos that relate to Lake Chapala.

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.

My 2022 book Lake Chapala: A Postcard History with reproductions of more than 150 vintage postcards tells the incredible story of how Lake Chapala became an international tourist and retirement center.

Sources

  • Francisco Hernández. 2018. Diario sin fechas de Charles B. Waite (novel). USA: Almadia.
  • Rosa Casanova and Adriana Konzevik. 2007. Mexico: A Photographic History. Mexico: Editorial RM.
  • The Mexican Herald: 3 March 1904, 7; 24 Apr 1908.
  • Diario Oficial de la Federación: 14 Jan 1908, 150-151; 1 June 1908, 477-8; 14 July 1908, 202-3.
  • INAH. 2004. Diario de Campo (Boletín Interno de los investigadores del área de antropología). No 72 (December 2004), p 46.

Comments, corrections and additional material are welcome, whether via comments or email.

Jul 112024
 

I recently came across a short, but interesting, piece describing Chapala in the mid-1940s. I currently know nothing about its author, Temple Manning, beyond the longevity of their syndicated byline, first used in the 1920s and still going strong in the 1960s.

Here are a few excerpts from Manning’s description of “Chapala — A Mexican City.”

MEXICO is certainly a tourists’ paradise, visited by people from all over the world. Yet some of the loveliest places are nearly always entirely overlooked by visitors in a frightful hurry to reach the popular tourist objectives. But those who love Mexico strive to avoid the beaten track even in memory and let their feet or their fancy wander in the direction of some of this earth’s loveliest places.

Illustration (artist uncredited) from The Waukesha County Freeman, 30 October 1944, 4

Illustration (artist uncredited) from The Waukesha County Freeman, 30 October 1944, 4.

Chapala itself is one of the most delightful spots we know in which to do nothing and thoroughly enjoy the process. It isn’t a sightseeing town, there are no ancient churches or colonial buildings ruins to be viewed, which is a very rare state of affairs for Mexico. The town is built along the shore of the lake which is about 75 miles long and from five to 25 miles wide. The lake shores for miles in either direction are lined with lovely parks and charming villas, and the lake itself is a favorite bathing spot…

One of the most delightful experiences at Chapala is a launch ride around the lake. It is the best way to see the wild bird and fowl for which the district is famous. Lake Chapala and nearby ponds are among the few remaining haunts of the snowy egret whose feathers used to adorn the hats of the smartest abroad. The lake also teems with large turtles, harmless fellows since the bathers never take any notice of them. The launch ride, too, offers a good vantage point from which to view the lovely villas and gardens.

Building goes on apace at Chapala. To prevent speculators from buying land and holding it for a rise in values, an ordinance has been passed that requires a house to be built within a year of buying a lot. And since there are strict regulations about the type of house that may be erected, the result is a colony of artistic houses set in lovely, carefully tended grounds.

Chapala is famous for fine food and also for strolling bands of singers and players, some of whom sing and play exceptionally well. To eat fine food whilst being serenaded by an impromptu orchestra that plays for you and your party alone, is one of the more pleasant experiences of life, and at Chapala it can be enjoyed for a very modest outlay.

The town is also famous for its flowers. On one hill alone two thousand bougainvilles have been planted. After you have visited Chapala, you’ll always think of it in connection with beautiful flowers.

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.

Source

  • Temple Manning. 1944. “Chapala — A Mexican City.” The Waukesha County Freeman, 30 October 1944, 4.

Comments, corrections and additional material are welcome, whether via comments or email.

Jul 042024
 

Ajijic’s unofficial photographer in the early 1970s was free-spirited Beverly Johnson (1933-1976), one of the many people who helped make Ajijic tick in what old timers still remember as the ‘good old days.’ Beverly and her five young children moved to Mexico in the early 1960s and settled in Ajijic, where she hoped to eke out a living from singing.

Photo of Beverly Johnson by Helen Goodridge. Reproduced by kind permission of Jill Maldonado.

Photo of Beverly Johnson in Ajijic by Helen Goodridge. Reproduced by kind permission of Jill Maldonado.

The tenuous roots that she initially put down in Ajijic grew steadily over the years, despite her premature death in 1976, and her children have maintained ties to the village that endure to this day.

As Ajijic’s unofficial village photographer, Beverly was often asked to shoot personal portraits, wedding photos, landscape shots, first communions, baptisms and even portraits of recently deceased children for their families to remember them by.

At least one exhibition of Beverly’s photos was held in Ajijic. It was in about 1971 at the Galería del Lago (now the Ajijic Cultural Center), next to the old movie house. One of Beverly’s daughters recalls that her mother’s photos were also exhibited by Laura Bateman, who held shows in her own home before opening Ajijic’s first purpose-built gallery, Rincón del Arte at Hidalgo #41.

Some of Beverly’s photographs have been published previously. Beverly’s children kindly provided all but one of the photos for an article on MexConnect — A Tour of Ajijic, Chapala, Mexico, in about 1970 — with daughter Tamara choosing the selection and providing the captions.

Beverly’s daughter Jill has rightly observed that her mother’s black and white portraits of Ajijic families are “timeless and most precious.”

Gallery: All photos © Copyright Beverly Johnson, c 1973.

Copyright Beverly Johnson, c 1973
Copyright Beverly Johnson, c 1973
Copyright Beverly Johnson, c 1973
Copyright Beverly Johnson, c 1973
Copyright Beverly Johnson, c 1973
Copyright Beverly Johnson, c 1973
Copyright Beverly Johnson, c 1973
Copyright Beverly Johnson, c 1973
Copyright Beverly Johnson, c 1973
Copyright Beverly Johnson, c 1973
Copyright Beverly Johnson, c 1973
Copyright Beverly Johnson, c 1973
Copyright Beverly Johnson, c 1973
Copyright Beverly Johnson, c 1973
Copyright Beverly Johnson, c 1973
Copyright Beverly Johnson, c 1973
Copyright Beverly Johnson, c 1973
Copyright Beverly Johnson, c 1973
Copyright Beverly Johnson, c 1973
Copyright Beverly Johnson, c 1973
Copyright Beverly Johnson, c 1973
Copyright Beverly Johnson, c 1973
Copyright Beverly Johnson, c 1973
Copyright Beverly Johnson, c 1973
Copyright Beverly Johnson, c 1973
Copyright Beverly Johnson, c 1973
Copyright Beverly Johnson, c 1973
Copyright Beverly Johnson, c 1973
Copyright Beverly Johnson, c 1973
Copyright Beverly Johnson, c 1973
Copyright Beverly Johnson, c 1973
Copyright Beverly Johnson, c 1973
Copyright Beverly Johnson, c 1973
Copyright Beverly Johnson, c 1973
Copyright Beverly Johnson, c 1973
Copyright Beverly Johnson, c 1973
Copyright Beverly Johnson, c 1973
Copyright Beverly Johnson, c 1973
Copyright Beverly Johnson, c 1973
Copyright Beverly Johnson, c 1973
Copyright Beverly Johnson, c 1973
Copyright Beverly Johnson, c 1973
Copyright Beverly Johnson, c 1973
Copyright Beverly Johnson, c 1973
Copyright Beverly Johnson, c 1973
Copyright Beverly Johnson, c 1973
Copyright Beverly Johnson, c 1973
Copyright Beverly Johnson, c 1973

It is hoped to stage an exhibition of Beverly Johnson’s photographs at the Ajijic Museo de Arte (Priv. Flores Magón 3-A, Ajijic) to celebrate her important contribution to village life in Ajijic in the 1970s.

Acknowledgments

My thanks to Tamara Janúz, Jill Maldonado, Rachel Lyn Johnson and Miriam Pérez Johnson for their support in helping preserve their mother’s photographic legacy, and to Carol Shepherd McClain for graciously sharing the photographs used in this post to illustrate Beverly’s work.

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.

Several chapters of Foreign Footprints in Ajijic: Decades of Change in a Mexican Village offer more details about the history of the artistic community in Ajijic; chapter 30 is devoted to Beverly and her family.

Comments, corrections and additional material are welcome, whether via the comments feature or email.

Jun 292024
 

For Canadians, who celebrate 1 July as Canada Day, here is a list of Canadian artists and authors who have historical connections to Lake Chapala and who have been profiled on this site. Enjoy!

Visual artists

Henry Sandham (1842-1910), a well-known Canadian illustrator of the time, illustrated Charles Embree‘s historical novel, A Dream of a Throne, the Story of a Mexican Revolt (1900), the earliest English-language novel set at Lake Chapala. Embree, who published several novels and numerous short stories, was a genuine Mexicophile if ever there was one, but died in his early thirties.

Way back in the 1940s, painter Hari Kidd (1899-1964), who had served in the Royal Canadian Air Force, lived in Chapala. This is when he first met and fell in love with fellow artist Edythe Wallach, his future wife, who was then living in Ajijic.

Love was in the air at Lake Chapala in the 1940s. In Ajijic in 1949, Canadian writer Harold Masson (1915-2011) met and married English nurse Helen Rigall, who was in Ajijic visiting her uncle, Herbert Johnson, and his wife, Georgette.

American artist Gerry Pierce (1900-1969), who painted several watercolors in Ajijic in the mid-1940s, began his art career in Nova Scotia, Canada, in the late 1920s.

Canadian artist Clarence Ainslie Loomis painted Ajijic in the early 1990s. I would love to learn more about this elusive character whose paintings are very distinctive.

Loomis was following in the footsteps, so to speak, of Canadian artist Eunice Hunt and her husband Paul Huf who spent many years working in Ajijic in the 1960s and 1970s. The couple married in Ajijic and their two sons were both born in Mexico. The family subsequently moved to Paul’s native Germany to continue their artistic careers.

In the 1950s, a young Canadian woman, Dorothy Whelan, became the partner of artist and photographer Ernest Alexander (1921-1974) who ran the  Scorpion Club in Ajijic. “Alex” led an extraordinary life but, sadly, things spiraled out of control after the couple left Ajijic and moved to San Francisco.

Swedish-American visual artist Carlo Wahlbeck (born in 1933) studied at the Winnipeg School of Art in Canada and lived in Chapala for two or three years in the mid-1970s.

Multi-talented Mexican guitarist and artist Gustavo Sendis (1941-1989) lived many years in Ajijic and had an exhibition on Vancouver Island at Malaspina College (now Vancouver Island University) in Nanaimo, B.C., in July 1980. If anyone knows any details of this exhibit, then please get in touch!

Toronto muralist and painter John Russell Richmond (1926-2013) lived and painted in Ajijic for several years in the 1990s. In Ajijic, he became known (and signed his work) as Juan Compo.

Margaret Van Gurp (1926-2020), a well known artist from eastern Canada, sketched and painted in Jocotepec in 1983, while living with her daughter Susan, then working at the Lakeside School for the Deaf.

Hungarian-Canadian artist Michael Fischer (?-2018), based outside Toronto, taught illustration and composition at George Brown College, and painted at Lake Chapala several times, staying in San Juan Cosalá.

The body of work completed by Duncan de Kergommeaux during his visit of several weeks to San Juan Cosalá in 2006 was included in his solo show in Ottawa the following year.

Highly regarded painter, collage artist and violinist Leonard Brooks (1911-2011) and his wife, Reva, an award-winning photographer, made their home in San Miguel de Allende for more than fifty years. Brookes’ interesting collage acrylic on canvas titled “Chapala” was sold at auction in 2020.

Poets, authors, writers and playwrights

Several Canadian poets have been inspired by Lake Chapala. For example, Earle Birney visited Ajijic in the 1950s and Canadian performance poet Canadian performance poet Leanne Averbach visited the lake many years later. The great Al Purdy first visited Chapala on a quest to explore the haunts of D. H. Lawrence (1885-1930) and later produced a limited edition book based on his trip. [Lawrence wrote his novel “The Plumed Serpent” while staying in Chapala in 1923.] Purdy also wrote a travel piece about Ajijic.

Prominent Canadian folklorist Helen Creighton (1899-1989) was teaching at the American School of Guadalajara when she visited and photographed Lake Chapala at about the same time as D. H. Lawrence was there.

Canadian historian and non-fiction writer Ross Parmenter (1912-1999) only ever spent a few days at Lake Chapala, in 1946, but has left us detailed descriptions of the local villages and of what life was like at the time. His accounts of the difficulties of traveling from Chapala to Ajijic,  first by car, and then by boat, in the 1940s are interesting reading.

The enigmatic Maxwell Desmond Poyntz, who was born in British Columbia on 4 January 1918 and died in Canada, at the age of 81, on 29 November 1999, is known to have visited Jocotepec while working on a “proposed trilogy”. It is unclear if he ever finished this magnum opus; there is no record of its publication.

Former CBC war correspondent and author Captain William (“Bill”) Strange (1902-1983) and his wife Jean Strange, one of Canada’s earliest female architects, lived in Chapala for decades and, in the 1960s, produced several radio documentaries about Mexico.

US-born author and diplomat José de Olivares, who wrote an account of a perilous boat trip on Lake Chapala in 1901, held a US consular position in Hamilton, Ontario, from 1915-1924.

The famous Canadian playwright and novelist George Ryga (1932-1987) had a holiday home in San Antonio Tlayacapan for many years in the 1970s and 1980s and frequently visited and wrote while staying there. His play “Portrait of Angelica” is set in Ajijic. Several literary friends and relatives of Ryga also visited or used his holiday home. They include Ryga’s daughter Tanya (a drama teacher) and her husband Larry Reece, a musician, artist and drama professor; Brian Paisley, and the multi-talented Ken Smedley and his wife, the actress, artist and model, Dorian Smedley-Kohl. Ken and Dorian Smedley were instrumental in mounting the first (and only) Ajijic Fringe Theatre – “El Fringe” – in 1988.

Canada was a safe haven for Scottish Beat novelist Alexander Trocchi (1925-1984), who worked on his controversial novel Cain’s Book (1960) in Ajijic in the late 1950s. The group of friends that helped smuggle Trocchi into Canada to escape prosecution in the U.S. included American novelist Norman Mailer (who first visited Ajijic in the late-1940s).

American Buddhist author Pema Chödrön, known at the time as Deirdre Blomfield-Brown, lived with her then husband, the poet and writer Jim Levy, for about a year in Ajijic from mid-1968 until May 1969. Chödrön moved to Canada in 1984 to establish Gampo Abbey in Nova Scotia, Canada. She became the Abbey’s director in 1986 and still holds that position today.

Additional profiles of Canadian artists and authors associated with Lake Chapala are added periodically. This post was last updated on 29 June 2024.

Comments and corrections welcomed, whether via the comments function or email.

Jun 272024
 

Prolific author Emily Huntington was born on 22 October 1833 in Brooklyn, Connecticut, and died on 2 November 1913. Though Wikipedia claims that she died in Mexico City, contemporaneous newspapers make it clear that she died of heart trouble at her home in St. Paul, Minnesota, a few days after her eightieth birthday.

Huntington, who graduated in 1857 from Oberlin College, Ohio, married John E Miller in 1860. Their only daughter died in infancy. One of their three sons, Harry (born in about 1862) became a mining engineer in Mexico; in 1908, he married 24-year-old, Pachuca-born Sara Smith, in the city of Guanajuato.

Emily Huntington Miller, c 1883 (Public domain)

Emily Huntington Miller, c 1883 (Public domain)

Huntington founded or co-founded several children’s magazines, including The Little Corporal and St. Nicholas. She was also an Associate Editor of The Ladies Home Journal, and Dean of Women at Northwestern University in Illinois.

In 1860, she married John E. Miller. Of their children, three sons survived, including George A. Miller; their only daughter died in infancy.

Huntington, “the well known authoress,” stayed at the Hotel Ribera (aka Hotel Ribera Castellanos) in February 1911. The hotel, described in some detail by journalist Winifred Martin a couple of years earlier, subsequently had close associations with several other well-known literary figures, including D. H. Lawrence.

Emily Huntington Miller’s works include The Little corporal (1874); The parish of Fair Haven (1876); Fighting the enemy (1877); The house that Johnny rented (1877); Little neighbors (1879); Uncle Dick’s Legacy (1879); A year at Riverside Farm (1879); Kathie’s experience (1886); Debt and credit: a story of Acadia (1886); Thorn-apples (1887); What happened on a Christmas eve (1888); The royal road to fortune (1889); Helps and hindrances (1892); Songs from the nest (1894); and The adventures of a small boy (1923). In addition, she composed hundreds of poems, dozens of which were subsequently set to music, and many hymns.

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.

Lake Chapala: A Postcard History (2022) uses reproductions of more than 150 vintage postcards to tell the incredible story of the Hotel Ribera and how Lake Chapala became an international tourist and retirement center.

Sources

  • Star Tribune: 16 Nov 1913, 28.
  • San Francisco Examiner: 4 November 1913, 1.
  • The Mexican Herald: 17 Feb 1911, 7.
  • New York Times. 1913. “Mrs. Emily Huntington Miller” (obit). New York Times, 5 November 1913.

Comments, corrections and additional material are welcome, whether via the comments feature or email.

Jun 202024
 

At the start of the twentieth century, Jacob Kalb, a Jewish immigrant of Austrian ancestry, owned and operated the Iturbide Curio Store in downtown Mexico City. The store, selling all manner of Mexican tourist souvenirs and mementoes, opened in 1903 on the ground floor of the Hotel Iturbide. The hotel occupied the historic Palacio de Iturbide (Iturbide Palace), a superb 18th century Mexican baroque building that survives to this day. It was bought and beautifully restored in 1965 by the Banco Nacional de México (Banamex) and is now the Banamex Cultural Foundation (Fomento Cultural Banamex).

The Iturbide Curio Store was one of several competing curio stores in that area at that time, including one run by Jakob Granat, one of Kalb’s nephews, across the street. (Granat also published at least one postcard of Chapala.)

No expense was spared when Kalb opened his store in 1903. Carefully selected wares were displayed in elegant showcases, all beautifully illuminated by electric lighting, a relatively recent innovation.

Iturbide Curio Store (publicity postcard image)

Iturbide Curio Store (publicity postcard image)

Soon afterwards, Kalb started to publish postcards (both monochrome and color), using various different imprints, ranging from ““Iturbide Curio Store” and “J.C.S” (typesetters of the time often used the letter J in place of the letter I) to “J.K.”

Kalb did not credit the photographer on his cards but at least one card utilizes a photograph taken by Charles Betts Waite, a noteworthy American photographer based in Mexico City at that time.

Kalb published dozens of cards of Guadalajara, some with undivided backs (and therefore pre-1906 in date). These early cards include the only known image of Lake Chapala published by Kalb. This attractive view of Casa Schnaider (Villa Josefina) with the Hotel Arzapalo in the background, was published in about 1904; a postally-used example was mailed the following year. The pretty, European-style ‘cottage’ was originally named Villa Albion, and had been built by the eccentric Norwegian-born Englishman Septimus Crowe in 1896, after he sold the Villa Montecarlo. In 1901, Crowe sold Villa Albion to the US-born Guadalajara beer magnate Joseph Maximilian Schnaider, who promptly renamed it Villa Josefina, in honor of his wife. More than a century later, the property continues to bear this name.

Lake Chapala. Postcard published by Iturbide Curio Store c. 1906

Photographer unknown. Lake Chapala. Iturbide Curio Store postcard #507. c. 1904.

Kalb published this image at least twice, with minor modifications. The “Iturbide Curio Store” version, numbered 228, had a wider white band along the bottom and a flag fluttering from the Villa Josefina flagpole. When Kalb reissued the photo as a “J.C.S.” edition, the image was slightly cropped and the flag removed.

Kalb produced several hundred postcards in total, covering the entire country and designed to appeal to the widest possible cross section of the rapidly increasing flow of tourists exploring Mexico.

In 1906, Kalb advertised in a Mexico City paper that he had the largest stock of picture postcards of Mexico. A collection of 100 views cost $2.00; the wholesale price was $16.00 for 1000.

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.

My 2022 book Lake Chapala: A Postcard History uses reproductions of more than 150 vintage postcards to tell the incredible story of how Lake Chapala became an international tourist and retirement center.

Sources

  • Valentina Serrano & Ricardo Pelz. “Serie azul y roja de Jacobo Granat.” Presentation at 8th Mexican Congress on Postcards, Palacio Postal, Mexico City. 16-18 July 2015.
  • Arturo Guevara Escobar, 2012. “Jacobo Kalb, una lectura diferente. Parte I“, blog post dated 1 March 2012

Comments, corrections and additional material are welcome, whether via the comments feature or email.

Jun 132024
 

In the mid-1890s, New Orleans poet Mary Ashley Townsend, born in 1832, and her husband, Gideon, became, almost certainly, the first American couple to own property in the town of Chapala—and they didn’t even have to pay for it, because it was a gift from their eldest daughter, Cora.

Mary Ashley and Gideon lived in New Orleans, where she had established a reputation as a novelist and poet. She published under several pen names, including Xariffa (or Zariffa) for her serious poetry, and two “humorously masculine names”—Crab Crossbones and Michael O’Quillo—for satirical pieces. As “Poet Laureate of New Orleans,” she was commissioned to compose and recite a special poem for the opening of the New Orleans exposition in 1884.

Mary Ashley Townsend (American Women, 1897)

Mary Ashley Townsend (American Women, 1897)

Mary Ashley was widely traveled and first visited Mexico in 1875. During her extended visits in various parts of Mexico, Mary Ashley published regular columns in papers such as the New Orleans Picayune with astute and informative observations of natural history, architecture, people at work and play, fashion, society, food, etc. She was working on a book based on these columns at the time of her death. The book was only rediscovered and published many decades later, as Here and There in Mexico: The Travel Writings of Mary Ashley Townsend.

Mary Ashley’s daughter Cora Alice Townsend de Rascón (born in 1855) was the widow of wealthy hacienda owner and diplomat José Martín Rascón, the first Mexican minister to Japan, and a confidante of President Díaz. Rascón died unexpectedly in 1893 in San Francisco on his way home to Mexico. After his death, Cora inherited and administered his substantial estate, including several haciendas in San Luis Potosí.

In 1895, Cora bought the Villa Montecarlo from English eccentric Septimus Crowe and gave it to her parents as a Christmas present. A few weeks previously, Cora and her mother had both attended the 11th Congreso Internacional de Americanistas in Mexico City, as had British consul Lionel Carden, who had already started building Villa Tlalocan, his own well-appointed home in Chapala, designed by English architect George Edward King.

Cora’s parents loved Chapala and spent several months each winter there. Gideon Townsend, a financier, liked it for the sake of his health and planted dozens of coffee trees. The Townsend house—at that time the “furthest west of all the cottages”— was a prominent local landmark. According to The Mexican Herald in 1897, “On the highest peak one sees a bright red and white house with a tower which looks as if it came from the old baronial castles of the middle ages.”

Mary Ashley Townsend wrote several poems in Chapala, at least two of which are about the lake. The first, titled “On Lake Chapala” is typical of her lyrical style and offers a halcyon view of her winter home.

“On Lake Chapala”

Oh Nature! soother of the heart that bleeds
Thou, with the boundless beauty of thy skies.
And mountain shapes which improbably rise,
Dost preach thine own among a thousand creeds.

Amid conflicting ways, of words and deeds,
Bewildered man his tangled pathway plies
To clutch at truth where truth his grasp denies,
While thou, the unfailing trinity his soul unheeds!

‘Tis writ oh, Nature! on the veiled winds,
On voiceless planets that our planet nears,
In limpid brooks, in the unfathomed sea—
Writ on the pebble that the lone shore finds,
Writ on the foreheads of the flying years,
Thine was, thine is, thine man shall ever be.

+ + +

The second poem, titled simply “Lake Chapala,” is, in my opinion, far more interesting.

“Lake Chapala”

A sunken city in thy depths tis said,
Fair Lake Chapala, lieth hidden deep,
And water weeds across its casements creep,
Or bar the doors on its unburied dead.

Upon its domes and towers are never shed
The sun’s bright beams, its ancient gateways keep
Grim wardens sleeping an eternal sleep
While through its streets the marching ages tread.

But, in the night time when the moon is low,
The murmuring waves which touch thy tropic shore
The songs of Aztec maidens with them bring
And stronger voices of warriors in their woe
And lovers’ tender accents come once more
Up from the sunken city wandering.

+ + +

This poem relates directly to an idea then circling in the U.S. that an early town or city at Lake Chapala had been submerged and now lay under water. Distinguished American anthropologist Frederick Starr (1858-1933) spent the winter of 1895-1896 at Lake Chapala investigating the rumors of this submerged city, rumors based mainly on the large number of pottery fragments recovered from the lake bed whenever the water level fell. After collecting and studying 261 individual specimens of pottery, Starr concluded that they were likely to be “offerings made to the lake itself or some spirit resident there-in,” and not utilitarian household items. Starr also recognized that changes in lake level might explain why the pieces were now found at some distance from the current shoreline.

Townsend-book-coverIn “Lake Chapala,” Mary Ashley Townsend, looking across the waters of the lake from her stately residence, Villa Montecarlo, indulged her imagination and poetic talents.

Unfortunately, tragedy would soon befall her family. Her eldest daughter, Cora, married Bannister Smith Monro, a New Yorker living in Europe, in 1896, and moved to Paris. The Monros’ daughter (Cora Monro) was born the following year, and their son a year later. Tragically, on 28 March 1898, Cora died within days of giving birth to their son, who died only a few weeks later. As if this wasn’t enough ill-luck, Bannister died on 15 August 1899. Young Cora Monro, orphaned before she was three years old, inherited the massive land holdings in Mexico, and was taken in by her maternal aunt, Mrs George Lee, in Galveston, Texas. Mary Ashley’s husband, Gideon, also died in 1899, meaning that Mary Ashley had lost her eldest child, as well as a grandson, a son-in-law and her own husband within two years. The run of bad luck did not end there. Mary Ashley was severely injured in a train crash in Texas, and suffered months of ill health prior to her own death on 7 June 1901.

The Montecarlo property was eventually acquired—the conflicting versions of how this occurred are impossible to reconcile and leave several unanswered questions—by Aurelio González Hermosillo (1862–1927), a wealthy lawyer and financier who owned the Hacienda Santa Cruz del Valle near Guadalajara.

Note that American historian John Mason Hart’s account of Cora’s life in Empire and Revolution: The Americans in Mexico Since the Civil War, is error-strewn. His claim, for example, that Rascón died in 1896 and that Cora Townsend then continued to run the hacienda, very successfully, for another decade, until her own death in 1906, is clearly wrong since Rascón died in 1893 and Cora in 1898.

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.

Chapter 28 of If Walls Could Talk: Chapala’s Historic Buildings and Their Former Occupants (translated into Spanish as Si las paredes hablaran) includes more discussion of the Townsends’ ownership of Villa Montecarlo.

Acknowledgment

  • My sincere thanks to Michael Olivas for investigating the Stanton-Townsend Papers in the Special Collections Division of the Howard-Tilton Library at Tulane University, New Orleans.

Sources

  • James Mason Hart. 2002. Empire and Revolution: The Americans in Mexico Since the Civil War. University of California Press, page 398.
  • Mary Ashley Townsend. Undated, unpublished manuscripts, Box 3, Folder 17, Stanton-Townsend Papers, Special Collections Division, Howard-Tilton Library, Tulane University, New Orleans.
  • Mary Ashley Townsend. 2001. Here and There in Mexico: The Travel Writings of Mary Ashley Townsend. (edited by Ralph Lee Woodward, Jr.) University of Alabama Press.
  • The Salt Lake Herald: 16 November 1895.
  • Starr, Frederick. 1897. “The Little Pottery Objects of Lake Chapala, Mexico.” Department of Anthropology Bulletin II. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

Comments, corrections and additional material are welcome, whether via comments or email.

Jun 062024
 

Before the advent of trains and motor vehicles, the only way to get to Lake Chapala was to walk, ride or take a stagecoach (diligencia). The first regular Guadalajara–Chapala stagecoach service began in 1866. While the trip could be done in ten hours, it usually took twelve or more, and the mix of excitement, speed, fright, danger and uncertainty described by early travelers was certainly not for the faint-hearted.

After the completion of the Irapuato-Ocotlán-Atequiza-Guadalajara branch line of the Mexican Central Railway in 1888, demand for a Guadalajara–Chapala stagecoach service declined. Travelers from the city had a choice: they could take a train to Atequiza, followed by a relatively short stagecoach ride to Chapala, or they could take the train to Ocotlán, and then catch a steamboat to Chapala, avoiding having to ride the stagecoach at all.

I know of about ten early photos of stagecoaches taken in the town of Chapala. Some were used as book or magazine illustrations, and several were mass-produced as commercial picture postcards in the first decade of the twentieth century.

The images reproduced here are presented in approximate chronological order, based on evidence of publication dates and on details of buildings in the respective photos.

Postcard by Juan Kaiser

Fig 1. c 1900. Winfield Scott. Postcard by Juan Kaiser. The turreted building behind the stagecoach is Villa Ana Victoria. On the extreme right, a water carrier is walking towards the camera.

This photo (Fig 1) of a stagecoach on the eastern side of Calle del Muelle was uncredited when it was first published in 1900 to illustrate an article about Chapala by the Hon. Maud Pauncefote in Harper’s Bazar. The photo was also published in about 1901 on a triple-view postcard by Juan Kaiser, then based in San Luis Potosí. The other two photos on that postcard can be positively identified as the work of Winfield Scott, so there is little doubt that Scott also took this stagecoach photo.

A slightly cropped version of Fig 1 was included in Vitold de Szyszlo’s book, Dix mil kilometres a traverse le Mexique, 1909-1910, published in 1913, where the photo is credited to Charles B. Waite. This attribution is not as surprising as it sounds, given that Waite had purchased all Scott’s negatives and photo rights in April 1908.

Winfield Scott. Published in El Mundo, 2 June 1901.

Fig 2. c. 1900. Winfield Scott. Published in El Mundo Ilustrado, 2 June 1901.

Winfield Scott also took this photograph (Fig 2) of a stagecoach on the other side of Calle del Muelle, waiting outside the Hotel Arzapalo (which first opened in 1898). This image appeared in El Mundo Ilustrado in 1901, and in Four Track News in 1905.

Postcard by Juan Kaiser

Fig 3. c 1904. Photo by José María Lupercio (?). Postcard by Juan Kaiser.

Fig 3 is a somewhat similar image, which I believe was taken a year or two later, probably by Guadalajara-based photographer José María Lupercio. It was reproduced in about 1904 on postcards published both by Ruhland & Ahlschier and by Juan Kaiser, who by then had moved his publishing sideline from San Luis Potosí to Guadalajara. By that time, the Hotel Arzapalo owned two stagecoaches for daily service to and from Atequiza railroad station, as well as several carriages (guayines) for special trips.

Traveling by stagecoach was both uncomfortable and unreliable. Stagecoach service was often impossible during the rainy season, owing to the poor state of the wagon roads. In July 1904, Chapala hotel owners Victor Huber and Ignacio Arzapalo joined forces to finance repairs and reopen the road before October. At that time the stagecoach between Chapala and Atequiza cost one peso (US$0.50) each way.

Sumner Matheson. 1907.

Fig 4. 1907. Photo by Sumner W Matteson. (Courtesy Milwaukee Public Museum, Wisconsin.)

We can date this photograph (Fig 4) of another stagecoach outside the Hotel Arzapalo to 1907 with certainty, because it was taken by American photographer Sumner Matteson during his first trip to Mexico.

Postcard published by Schwidernoch, Austria.

Fig 5. c 1907. Photograph by José María Lupercio (?) Postcard published by T Schwidernoch, Austria.

This photo (Fig 5) must date from about the same time, and is believed to be another photograph taken by José María Lupercio. It was used by several postcard publishers, including Juan Kaiser (post-1906), Manuel Hernández (1907), and T. Schwidernoch of Vienna, Austria.

The postal service was efficient in those days. One of these cards, mailed in 1908 by guests at the Hotel Ribera Castellanos near Ocotlán, took only five days to reach Virginia! The card explained why the senders had chosen to stay near Ocotlán in preference to Chapala: “Would you like a souvenir of Mex? This is the coach they use to go from the R.R. [railroad] to the hotel on Lake Chapala fourteen miles. We are staying at a place on the same lake but only three miles from the R.R.”

Unknown photographer and publisher

Fig 6. c 1908. Unknown photographer. Believed to have been published by Juan Kaiser. (Courtesy of Ing. Manuel González García.)

In Fig 4 and Fig 5 there is no building abutting the Hotel Arzapalo, which proves they were taken prior to the second half of 1907, when construction began of the Guillermo de Alba-designed Hotel Palmera, completed in 1908. The Hotel Palmera does appear on the left side of this photo (Fig 6), a rare early image of a stagecoach in motion. The building on the right is the competing Gran Hotel Victor Huber (later Gran Hotel Chapala).

Unknown photographer

Fig 7. c 1908. Photographer and publisher unknown.

The Gran Hotel Victor Huber (later Gran Hotel Chapala) is shown in all its glory in Fig 7, which must date from about the same time.

By 1908, the days of stagecoaches were numbered, and the automobile was taking over. In 1906 prominent American dentist Dr. John W. Purnell drove his Reo from Guadalajara to Chapala in 3 hours 49 minutes, and made the return trip (including an 11-minute stop in Tlaquepaque) in 3 hours 39 minutes. The following year, Alfonso Fernández Somellera took just 63 minutes out to the lake and 65 minutes back to complete his round trip from the big city to Chapala (about 130 kilometers in total) in his 30-horsepower Packard.

Stagecoaches were unable to compete, in speed or comfort, and rapidly became a thing of the past.

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.

My 2022 book Lake Chapala: A Postcard History uses reproductions of more than 150 vintage postcards to tell the incredible story of how Lake Chapala became an international tourist and retirement center.

Comments, corrections and additional material are welcome, whether via comments or email.

May 302024
 

Though I didn’t realize it at the time, a photo I took of Ajijic in 1980 (below) shows, almost precisely in the middle, the bare hillside known as Cerro del Aguila (“Hill of the Eagle”) or Cerro Colorado (“Colored Hill”). According to a local legend, the hillside was formed during the centuries-long migration of the Mexica people (the forerunners of the Aztecs) from their ancestral homeland, Aztlán, en route to founding their capital city, Tenochtitlan (where Mexico City stands today) in 1325.

The Mexica were looking for a sign—an eagle perched on a prickly pear cactus—to tell them where to found their new capital and ceremonial center. Today, this sign, with the  addition of a serpent, which the eagle is devouring, is a national symbol and appears on the national flag.

Ajijic and its eagle. © Tony Burton, 1980.

Ajijic and its eagle. © Tony Burton, 1980.

The Ajijic version of the legend was summarized in 1988 by journalist Ruth Netherton, a long-time Ajijic resident. She explained to her readers that the Mexica saw their sign at Lake Chapala’s Isla de los Alacranes:

As the priests pondered the omen, a strong wind blew up and dashed the eagle against a barren hill, leaving its image there. The eagle is still visible today above Rancho del Oro, with wings outstretched, a shrub forming the eye. Why the priests were discouraged from founding Tenochtitlan at Lake Chapala is not explained. Perhaps the strong wind (called locally “el abajeño” or “el mexicano”) was considered a bad omen.”

This is an appealing legend, and one which directly links Ajijic to the rise of the Aztec Empire. But the unanswered question about this legend is just how old it might be. Did the legend start when Ajijic was founded in 1531? Is it possible to trace its origin back that far, or even further?

John Spillyards. 2023. Ajijic: Cerro del Aguila (cropped from original image)

Ajijic: Cerro del Aguila. © John Spillyards. 2023.  Image reproduced courtesy of the photographer.

In my thirty-plus years of research about Lake Chapala, I have come across remarkably few references to the Ajijic Eagle, and none of them date back very far. The earliest documentary evidence I’ve come across is a paragraph written by Dr Leo Stanley in October 1937, when he and and a friend rode horseback from Chapala to Jocotepec, and then continued along the southern shore of the lake to San Luis [Soyutlán], where they found lodgings for the night. In the early evening, Stanley strolled down to the lake shore:

It was a very pretty afternoon, and off in the distance across the lake toward San Juan could be seen a peculiar phenomenon. By landslides and erosions in the mountains, the natural form of a spread eagle was displayed in brown against the green verdure. This marking could be seen very distinctly from the southern shore of the lake.”

On the other hand, none of the three best-known books about the Ajijic area written a decade later—House in the Sun and Village in the Sun, both by ‘Dane Chandos (Peter Lilley and Nigel Millett), and Dust on my Heart, by Neill James— includes any mention or description of the Ajijic Eagle.

This leads me to believe that, even though the Mexica migration legend is ancient, its link to the Ajijic eagle is much more recent, perhaps dating from the beginning of the twentieth century, and associated with several decades of mining in the hills behind Ajijic. For example, just before the Mexican Revolution erupted in 1910, we know that the owners of one of the main mines were installing “a cyanide annex at the plant, which now consists of ten-stamp concentrators and amalgamating plates.” The use of cyanide on this scale would have killed off the immediate vegetation and destroyed soil organisms, creating a barren area that has remained infertile to this day: the unusual eagle-shaped hillside scar on Cerro Colorado.

If you know of other literary or documentary references to the Ajijic Eagle, please let me know!

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.

Several chapters of Foreign Footprints in Ajijic: Decades of Change in a Mexican Village offer more details about the history of mining, artists and authors in Ajijic.

Sources

  • The Mexican Herald, 15 December 1909, 15.
  • Ruth Netherton. 1988. “Laguna Chapalac.” Guadalajara Reporter, 20 August 1988.
  • Leo L. Stanley. 1937. “Mixing in Mexico,” 1937, two volumes. Leo L. Stanley Papers, MS 2061, California Historical Society. Volume 2. (My sincere thanks to Frances Kaplan, Reference & Outreach Librarian of the California Historical Society, and to the California Historical Society for permission to reproduce the excerpt used in this post.)

Comments, corrections and additional material are welcome, whether via the comments feature or email.

May 232024
 

Canadian artist Frank Leonard Brooks (1911-2011), usually known simply as Leonard Brooks, was a painter and textile artist who made his home in San Miguel de Allende for more than fifty years.

He and his wife, Reva, a photographer, occasionally visited Chapala, but never for any extended period of time. It was something of a surprise to me, therefore, when this interesting collage acrylic on canvas painting titled “Chapala,” painted by Leonard in 1978, came up at auction in Los Angeles in 2020.

1978. Chapala. Credit: Abeil Auction.

Leonard Brooks. 1978. Chapala. Credit: Abeil Auction.

How did the Brookses come to live in San Miguel de Allende? They arrived in 1947 to teach at the city’s first school of Fine Arts, then being run by American artist Stirling Dickinson, who had established himself in the city a decade earlier. Leonard Brooks, born in England, had finished a stint as a war artist, and he and Riva only intended to stay for a year, while they worked out what to do next, but fell in love with Mexico and with San Miguel de Allende. For half a century, they helped San Miguel de Allende develop its vibrant art and music scene, now deservedly famous nationwide.

A series of exhibitions of Leonard’s paintings in the 1950s received favorable reviews. Paintings by Leonard and prints of Reva’s photos were bought by many famous visitors to San Miguel, including film director John Huston. While Leonard’s early paintings were usually representational, many of his later paintings were impressionist or abstract. They included collage acrylics, many inspired by his San Miguel studio and garden.

Reva was chosen by The San Francisco Museum of Art in 1975 as one of the top fifty female photographers of all time. Her work was recognized and admired by such famous exponents of her art as Ansel Adams and Edward Weston.

Leonard made periodic visits to Canada to exhibit and sell his paintings at galleries in Vancouver and Toronto. From the late 1960s onward, his paintings, tapestries and collages were featured in several hugely successful exhibitions. In 1998, both Leonard and Reva had hugely successful solo shows in Canada, in Toronto and Kingston, respectively.

Leonard also wrote several best-selling books on painting techniques, and found time to illustrate two articles in the popular monthly Ford Times, including an article about Mexico in December 1953.

Back in San Miguel, Leonard was not only an artist and one of the founding partners of the city’s first specialist art gallery, he was also a highly accomplished musician who played first violin with the Guanajuato Symphony Orchestra. In the 1960s, Leonard started offering free music lessons to local children, and subsequently headed the music program at the San Miguel Cultural Center for 25 years. Among the many local youngsters encouraged by Leonard to play the violin were Daniel Aguascalientes and his five brothers, who later formed Hermanos Aguascalientes y sus violines internacionales.

Leonard and Reva Brooks made a truly extraordinary contribution to San Miguel de Allende. Their joint art and photography collection is now managed by Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario.

Other artists with strong ties to both Chapala and San Miguel de Allende

Californian Priscilla (“Pris”) Frazer (1907-1973) first traveled to Mexico in 1955 to study with James Pinto at the Instituto Allende in San Miguel de Allende.

William (“Bill”) Gentes (1917-2000) studied at the Instituto in 1968, before living for many years in Chapala.

Canadian artist Duncan de Kergommeaux (born 1927) won a Canada Council Grant in 1958 to travel in Mexico and study at the Instituto Allende.

Tully Judson Petty Jr. (1928-1992) attended San Miguel de Allende School of Fine Arts in 1948 and lived in Ajijic in the mid-1960s.

Chicago painter Harry Mintz (1907-2002) taught at the Bellas Artes school in San Miguel in 1958, where he met and fell in love with Rosabelle Vita Truglio, a visiting summer student; they later lived and painted in Chapala.

Betty Binkley (1914-1978) lived in Chapala in the 1940s and lived her later years in San Miguel.

George Rae Marsh (Williams), aka Georgia Cogswell (1925-1997), and her first husband, the novelist Willard Marsh, spent time in both Ajijic and San Miguel. After Willard’s death, George Rae married sci-fi writer Theodore Rose Cogswell (1918-1987) in San Miguel; they then divided their time between Ajijic, San Miguel de Allende and the U.S.

Bob Somerlott, a well-respected writer of both fiction and non-fiction, lived intermittently at Ajijic in the 1960s before moving to San Miguel de Allende, where he resided for almost forty years.

Auguste Killat Foust (1915-2010), better known as Gustel Foust, lived five years in San Miguel before moving to Guadalajara and then Ajijic, where she lived from 1978 to 1984.

At least four artists born in Ajijic—Florentino Padilla (c 1943-2010), Javier Zaragoza (born 1944), Antonio Cárdenas Perales (born 1945), and Antonio López Vega (born 1953)—studied in San Miguel de Allende. All four had started painting in the free art classes (now known as the Children’s Art Program) begun in Ajijic by Neill James in the 1950s; James recognized their talents, lobbied on their behalf, and—along with other sponsors—helped fund their studies.

Sources

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.

Several chapters of Foreign Footprints in Ajijic: Decades of Change in a Mexican Village offer more details about the history of the artistic community in Ajijic.

Comments, corrections and additional material are welcome, whether via comments or email.

May 162024
 

Many artists and authors have visited Lake Chapala in search of, or in homage to, their literary or artistic idols. But what about those who have also spent time collecting ancient stone and pottery idols and artifacts? There are far more members of this latter group than I first thought.

The first academic report of such artifacts in the international press was anthropologist Frederick Starr‘s short, illustrated booklet titled The Little Pottery Objects of Lake Chapala, Mexico, published in 1897. Starr, who visited Chapala over the winter of 1895-96, credited Francisco Fredenhagen with having introduced him to archaeological pieces from the western end of the lake, and suggested a simple typology for the different kinds of objects he had examined. Starr’s collection of ‘miniature pottery’ now resides in Harvard University’s Peabody Museum. Professor Starr’s handwriting may explain why several items are recorded as having been collected in “San Juan Coyala,” instead of San Juan Cosalá!

Fig 52 of Starr (1897)

Fig 52 of Starr (1897)

(Note that, while collecting ancient artifacts as souvenirs and removing them from Mexico was a common practice at the time, it can now result in severe legal consequences.)

Coincidentally, Starr’s visit to Chapala came only a few weeks after a major international conference of ‘Americanistas’ in Mexico City. Several of the attendees had close links to Lake Chapala, including:

  • Lionel Carden, the British consul to Mexico Lionel Carden, who was building a house (Villa Tlalocan) in Chapala.
  • New Orleans poet Mary Ashley Townsend and her daughter, Mrs Cora Townsend de Rascón: Cora bought Villa Montecarlo in Chapala for her mother that year (1895) as a Christmas gift.
  • Ethnographer Jeremiah Curtin, who left us an unforgettable description of meeting Septimus Crowe, the eccentric Englishman and pioneer foreign settler in Chapala, on the train home from the conference.
  • San Diego language teacher Eduardo H Coffey, who broke the first news in English of a giant whirlpool that struck the western end of Lake Chapala in January 1896.
  • Historian Luis Pérez Verdía, who (in 1904) began building the iconic Victorian-style house close to the church now commonly known as Casa Braniff.

The female English artist and amateur archaeologist Adela Breton, an intrepid traveler who presented papers at later Americanistas’ conferences, also visited Chapala in 1896 and collected a few pottery items. She is best remembered today for having recorded ancient Mayan murals and friezes; in some cases the originals no longer exist, and her magnificent drawings and watercolors are the best record we have of these artistic and cultural treasures.

Also visiting Lake Chapala in the 1890s was Norwegian anthropologist Carl Lumholtz, though his findings were not published until 1902. He recorded excavations near Chapala, and the finding of two ‘ceremonial hatchets.’ As we shall see shortly, Lumholtz also apparently bought several ancient artifacts, some or all of which may have been fake.

American journalist George W Baylor described in a 1902 article about Chapala how tourists staying at the Hotel Arzapalo would walk along the beach each morning,

examining the water’s edge closely for ollitas and various kinds of toys which are washed up every night from the lake. Some represent bake ovens, chairs, ducks or geese, volcanoes, and after a storm they are quite plentiful, and an early rise and race is made to get them. They can be bought quite cheap but most every visitor wants to say, ‘I found this on the beach at Lake Chapala.’ One [explanation] is that there was at one time an island in front of Chapala on which there was quite a populous city, and say that this is more than likely, as innumerable pieces of porous burnt rock keep washing ashore.

Another probable explanation is that those three million people that have lived on the borders of the lake since the year 1, threw those toys into the water to propitiate their god of water and rain, Tlaloc, and from the quantities that are carried off by tourists and others annually, each of the three millions of ancients must have put in a bushel apiece. They are made of yellow and blue clay, and burned, and occasionally of stone.

Horrible figures of idols come from the foothills, where in ages past were probably pueblos swarming with Indians. Others are dug from the banks of arroyos in a white cement. Others well, they are manufactured up to date and are sold to innocent parties as contemporaneous with Adam and Eve – nothing later than Montezuma.”

American artists Everett Gee Jackson and Lowell Houser lived for several years in Chapala in the mid-1920s. Jackson amassed his own collection of figurines from Chapala, and published an analysis of them in 1941. In his 1987 memoir It’s a Long Road to Comondú, Jackson also explains how he taught a local boy, Isidoro Pulido (about whom more later), how to make reproductions of figurines! On a return visit to Chapala in 1950, Jackson was delighted to find that,

Isidoro had become a maker of candy and a dealer in pre-Columbian art in the patio of his house on Los Niños Héroes Street. I did not teach him to make candy, but when he was just a boy I had shown him how he could reproduce those figurines he and Eileen [Jackson’s wife] used to dig up back of Chapala. Now he not only made them well, but he would also take them out into the fields and gullies, bury them, and then dig them up in the company of American tourists, who were beginning to come to Chapala in increasing numbers. Isidoro did not feel guilty when the tourists bought his works; he believed his creations were just as good as the pre-Columbian ones.”

Whether or not the locals really needed Jackson’s help to produce ‘fake’ antiquities is debatable, given Baylor’s testimony that even at the very start of the twentieth century some people were already  making—and selling—genuine-looking artifacts to unsuspecting foreign visitors.

German-born artist Trude Neuhaus also first visited Chapala in the mid-1920s, as part of her preparations for a show in New York in 1925. The New York Times reported that the exhibition, previously shown at the National Art Gallery in Mexico City, included “paintings, water colors and drawings of Mexican types and scenery,” as well as “Aztec figurines and pottery recently excavated by the artist in Chapala, Mexico.”

Poet and novelist Idella Purnell, born in Guadalajara, had studied under American poet Witter Bynner at the University of California, and played a key role in the decision of English novelist D. H. Lawrence to visit Chapala in 1923. Purnell later penned a delightful, and moving, story, “The Idols Of San Juan Cosala,” for the American Junior Red Cross News.

Five years after American anthropologist Elsie Crews Parsons visited Chapala in 1932, she wrote a short paper entitled “Some Mexican Idolos in Folklore.” She cast doubt on the authenticity of the stone ídolos (idols) collected by some previous anthropologists and ethnographers, writing that, ever since the 1890s there has been,

at this little Lakeside resort a traffic in the ídolos which have been washed up from the lake or dug up in the hills back of town, in ancient Indian cemeteries, or faked by the townspeople. An English lady who visited Chapala thirty-nine years ago quotes Mr. Crow[e] as saying that the ídolos sold Lumholtz were faked, information that the somewhat malicious Mr. Crow[e] did not impart to the ethnologist.”

The identity of the ‘English lady’ referred to by Parsons is unclear. The most likely candidates are either the Honorable Selina Maud Pauncefote, daughter of the British Ambassador in Washington, or Adela Breton, both of whom visited in 1896.

While Parsons doubted the authenticity of Lumholtz’s collection, she was convinced that the items collected at about the same time by Frederick Starr were definitely genuine.

Californian prison doctor Leo Stanley visited Lake Chapala in 1937. He was sufficiently intrigued by the ancient artifacts he saw to seek out a local to help him find and excavate likely locations. In one of those coincidences that are seemingly inevitable in real life, the local was ‘Ysidoro’, the young man befriended years earlier by Everett Gee Jackson! Stanley’s account of the effort involved in hunting for idols with Isidoro Pulido—and of their eventual ‘success’—is well worth the read.

Leo Stanley. 1937. "Digging for Treasure." By kind permission of California Historical Society.

Leo Stanley. 1937. “Digging for Treasure.” By kind permission of California Historical Society.

English author Barbara Compton visited Lake Chapala in 1946. One of the main characters in her semi-autobiographical novel To The Isthmus is an idol hunter and fellow guest at Casa Heuer who regularly left Ajijic for a few days at a time to explore new sites. In real life, she later married the man who had given her the inspiration for this character.

In 1948, author Neill James, an avid treasure hunter, explained to a visiting reporter how:

When the water in Lake Chapala is low, you can sit in it waist deep, dig in the sand and bring up miniature idols, medallions, vases, kitchen utensils and other things that the Indians threw into the lake in their worship of the rain god hundreds of years ago.”

Journalist Kenneth McCaleb recalled in a Texas newspaper in 1965 how he had known a very good faker of antiquities in Chapala, who “specialized in the familiar pre-Columbian ‘primitive’ ceramic figurines of ancient Mexico.” McCaleb reported that the aging process was a secret, but that the maker would guide customers to “places where, after some healthful exercise, he dug up his own archaeological objects.” And the name of this faker? None other than our old friend Isidoro!

Unlike the collecting of ancient idols, with their often dubious provenance, there is—I am glad to report—no obvious drawback to my fixation on collecting and profiling the famous authors and artists associated with Lake Chapala!

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.

My 2022 book Lake Chapala: A Postcard History uses reproductions of more than 150 vintage postcards to tell the incredible story of how Lake Chapala became an international tourist and retirement center.

Sources

  • George Wythe Baylor. 1902. “Lovely Lake Chapala.” El Paso Herald, 1 November 1902, 10.
  • Adele C. Breton. 1903. “Some Mexican portrait clay figures,” Man, vol 3, 130-133.
  • Barbara Compton. 1964. To The Isthmus. New York: Simon & Schuster.
  • Mary Hirscheld. 1948. “Author in Mexico.” Cleveland Plain Dealer, 10 April 1948, 8.
  • Everett Gee Jackson. 1941. “The Pre-Columbian Ceramic Figurines from Western Mexico.” Parnassus, Vol. 13, No. 1 (Jan., 1941), 17-20.
  • Everett Gee Jackson. 1987. It’s a Long Road to Comondú. Texas A&M University Press.
  • Carl Lumholtz. 1902. Unknown Mexico (2 vols). 1973 reprint: Rio Grande Press.
  • Kenneth McCaleb. 1968. “Conversation Piece.” Corpus Christi Times, 27 January 1965, 14.
  • Elsie Clews Parsons. 1937. “Some Mexican Idolos in Folklore”, The Scientific Monthly, May 1937.
  • Idella Purnell. 1936. “The Idols Of San Juan Cosala.” American Junior Red Cross News, December 1936.
  • Leo L. Stanley. 1937. “Mixing in Mexico.”(2 vols). Leo L. Stanley Papers, MS 2061, California Historical Society. Volume 2.
  • Frederick Starr. 1897. The Little Pottery Objects of Lake Chapala, Mexico, Bulletin II, Department of Anthropology, University of Chicago.

Comments, corrections and additional material are welcome, whether via the comments feature or email.

May 092024
 

American photographer Sumner W Matteson has not received the attention he deserves for the thousands of outstanding images of landscapes and people in the US, Cuba and Mexico he took at the start of the twentieth century.

Sumner Warren Matteson Jr was born on 15 September 1867 in Decorah, Iowa, and died in Mexico City on 27 Oct 1920. Following his death, the American Consulate in Mexico City curtly reported: “ASSETS: Miscellaneous articles of clothing of no intrinsic value. Given away and destroyed. Suitcase.” Matteson had only just celebrated his 53rd birthday.

German-Mexican photographer Hugo Brehme (1882-1954), based in Mexico City, had seen some of Matteson’s work and bought some of Matteson’s Mexican negatives from his estate. Brehme later printed some of them under his own copyright, sometimes with a note that the negatives were the work of Matteson.

Sumner W Matheson. 1907. Native craft near outlet of Lake Chapala and water hyacinth drifting with the wind. Reproduced courtesy of Milwaukee Public Museum, Wisconsin.

Sumner W Matteson. 1907. “Native craft near outlet of Lake Chapala and water hyacinth drifting with the wind.” Reproduced courtesy of Milwaukee Public Museum, Wisconsin.

The photos in this post are reproduced by kind permission of the Milwaukee Public Museum in Wisconsin, which purchased them from the Matteson estate in 1922. Other Matteson negatives and prints can be found in the collections of the Science Museum of Minnesota in Saint Paul, the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington.

Matteson graduated with a B.S. degree from the University of Minnesota in 1888, and worked for a few years as a banking clerk before becoming an agent for a bicycle manufacturer, the Overman Wheel Company. By the end of the century, Matteson was calling himself an “amateur photographer” and a “traveling correspondent.”

In 1902 an album of his Hopi Indian photos was presented to the Smithsonian Institute, and Matteson documented several other indigenous groups in New Mexico and Arizona, as well as spending many months in Cuba.

The photos shown in this profile were all taken in 1907, during Matteson’s first trip to Mexico.

Sumner W Matheson. 1907. Tramp musicians who carry copper coins in sombrero and silver coins in their ears (note 25 cent in ear nearest tree) taken near Hotel Ribera, Lake Chapala. Reproduced courtesy of Milwaukee Public Museum, Wisconsin.

Sumner W Matteson. 1907. “Tramp musicians who carry copper coins in sombrero and silver coins in their ears (note 25 cent in ear nearest tree) taken near Hotel Ribera, Lake Chapala.” Reproduced courtesy of Milwaukee Public Museum, Wisconsin.

During this first visit to Mexico in 1907, Matteson spent 10 months climbing mountains and traveling around the Republic. A Mexico City daily described him as “the expert photographer who has traveled over a great portion of the world as the representative of a number of American newspapers, periodicals and magazines and whose work has evoked high commendation wherever it is known.”

Using Mexico City as his base, he climbed Popocatapetl and Orizaba volcanoes before succeeding in a 5-day ascent of “the most interesting and picturesque of them all”—Volcán de Fuego and Nevado de Colima, the twin volcanoes in Colima. Matteson succeeded in getting photos from inside the Nevado’s crater. From atop the Nevado, Matteson, and his small group—which included Samuel E Rogers of Ocotlán—could see from the Pacific Ocean to Lake Chapala.

On their way up the Volcán de Fuego, the climbing party happened across a “primitive ice plant,” where layers of hailstones were “gathered up in piles and placed in a layer—then with grass thrown on in, another layer is put on, and stamped down, and then wound in cloth and cut up in blocks of forty pounds each.”

Sumner W Matheson. 1907. Stagecoach from Lake Chapala. Reproduced courtesy of Milwaukee Public Museum, Wisconsin.

Sumner W Matteson. 1907. “Stage coach from Lake Chapala.” Reproduced courtesy of Milwaukee Public Museum, Wisconsin.

Matteson’s second trip to Mexico was in 1920. After another successful ascent of Mt. Popocatepetl with some American friends, he stayed too long at the high altitude near the summit and developed pulmonary edema. He barely made it back to his hotel in Mexico City before he collapsed and died.

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.

My 2022 book Lake Chapala: A Postcard History uses reproductions of more than 150 vintage postcards to tell the incredible story of how Lake Chapala became an international tourist and retirement center.

Sources

  • Anja Müller, Gudrun Schumacher, Gregor Wolff. 2015. “Adventurer with Bike and Camera: Sumner W. Matteson (1867-1920),” pp 136-145 in Gregor Wolff (ed). 2015. Explorers and Entrepreneurs behind the Camera…. Berlin: Ibero-Amerikanisches Insitut.
  • Louis B. Casagrande and Phillips Bourns. 1983. Side Trips: The Photography of Sumner W. Matteson, 1898-1908. Milwaukee Public Museum.
  • The Mexican Herald: 23 June 1907, 12; 27 August 1907, 5.
  • Great Falls Tribune: 24 October 1902.

Comments, corrections and additional material are welcome, whether via the comments feature or email.

May 022024
 

The text of “A Brief History of Ajijic,” by June Nay Summers (1916-2001), comes directly from her own 1993 booklet Lake Chapala Villages in the Sun. The full text of the article is on the web, and parts of it are sometimes repeated in presentations in Ajijic. But how accurate is her account of Ajijic’s history?

A Brief History of Ajijic (Ojo del Lago, December 2012)

A Brief History of Ajijic (Ojo del Lago, December 2012)

My critique of the article follows, with quotes from the original in red:

“Ajijic was settled by people who came from the north, and their origin is explained by a legend. There was a place far to the north called ‘Whiteness’, and, from its seven caves, seven tribes set out towards the south.”

Ajijic did not exist until 1531, when it was founded by Franciscan friar Martín de Jesús (or de la Coruña), who suggested to an indigenous group led by Xitomatl (later baptized Andrés Carlos) that they move their existing community to begin a new settlement, where water was more readily available, named Axixic [Ajijic].

Summers’ account echoes a local legend that these groups were descendants or offshoots of the Mexica people (forerunners of the Aztecs) who may have settled temporarily on the shores of Lake Chapala while en route from their ancestral homeland (Aztlan in the north) to found a new city, Tenochtitlan (where Mexico City stands today). The meaning of Aztlan is unknown, with ‘place of whiteness’ being only one of several possible alternative derivations. According to the legend, before living in Atzlan, the Mexica were one of the seven tribes occupying seven caves in a mythical place named Chicomoztoc.

Ethnoarchaeologist Dr Carolyn Baus Czitrom found that all the indigenous people living on the northern shore of Lake Chapala at the time of the conquest belonged to the Coca indigenous group, except for those living in San Juan Cosalá, Ajijic, San Antonio Tlayacapan and Chapala, who were Caxcan. The origin of both groups, and their kinship (if any) with the Mexica, is unknown.

“These primitives lived on Chapala’s vast shores with no thought of founding permanent pueblos. Nor were they curious about their own origins, their forefathers or their names. Their vision of the world was simple. They were completely absorbed with the rendering of tribute to their gods. It was through, they thought, the pleasing of these deities that the sun shone and the rains fell on their land. Obtaining their daily sustenance was their primary reason for being.”

This culturally insensitive claim is conjectural and overly simplistic. There is no evidence, to the best of my knowledge, that these early settlers (whether Coca or Caxcan) “established complex barricades on the shores of this immense lake.” According to Czitrom’s research, the Coca did have multiple deities, but they also had a social structure and settlements, comprised of homes built using adobe, stones and wood. The Coca also crafted several kinds of rafts and boats.

“In 1522, the Olid Expedition reached the eastern shores of Lake Chapala. When they arrived, Captain Avalos met with little resistance. A royal grant gave joint ownership of the area to Avalos and the Spanish Crown.”

This is another immense simplification. The Olid Expedition, which reached the southern shores of Lake Chapala in about 1522, involved Fernando (sometimes Hernando) de Saavedra, the older brother of Alonso de Ávalos. Alonso de Ávalos did not arrive in New Spain until 1523. The two brothers were cousins of Hernán Cortés, who granted them (and a third relative who died shortly afterwards) the encomienda (the right to collect tributes and labor from indigenous inhabitants) for a large area, which included the southern shore of Lake Chapala, and later also the northern shore. After their partner’s death, the two brothers shared tribute payments from the encomienda. After Fernando died in 1535, his half-share reverted to the Spanish Crown. The encomienda system did not, strictly speaking, constitute either solo or joint ownership. The tributes supplied by Ajijic every 80 days consisted of blankets and items of clothing, cotton, fish and provisions.

“Close in Avalos’ (a cousin of Cortez) wake came other relatives of Cortez. One, by the name of Saenz, acquired almost all of the property that is now Ajijic…. By 1530, the Saenz property was one big hacienda. The principal crop was mezcal for making tequila. The hillsides were covered with mezcal plants and their soft blue-green blanketed hill and dale.”

Summers’ timeline is wildly inaccurate. No haciendas had been established in this area by 1530; Spanish settlement had barely got underway. Construction of the first Franciscan friary in Ajijic began in 1531, and the earliest haciendas in the surrounding region date from about a century later. There is no record of anyone named ‘Saenz’ ever owning any hacienda near Ajijic, though a Sebastian Sainz (note spelling) acquired the Hacienda El Cuije (which included land in and around Ajijic) in about 1900, following the murder of its former owner, Hans (‘Juan’) Jaacks. Sainz had no known familial connection to Hernán Cortés. Both Sebastian Sainz Peña (ca 1851-1927) and his wife, María Dolores Stephenson Zambrano (1869-1958) were born in Spain. They arrived in Mexico in the 1890s and quickly amassed an extensive property portfolio in Ajijic and Chapala.

According to most historians, tequila was not produced commercially until the 1700s, and the first exports of tequila (from anywhere in Mexico) were not until the 1870s. Agaves (mezcal plants) are not mentioned in distinguished naturalist Henri Galeotti’s comprehensive description of Lake Chapala’s geology, flora and fauna after his visit in 1837, or in Mariano Bárcena’s meticulous statistical account of Ajijic in 1888. [English translations of excerpts from Galeotti and Bárcena can be found in Lake Chapala Through The Ages: an anthology of travelers’ tales.]

If either Jaacks and/or Sainz pioneered the commercial cultivation of agaves in the Ajijic area, it was probably in the 1890s, though contemporaneous descriptions of Jaack’s production at the time of his death in 1896 mention cattle, oranges, bananas and coffee, but not agaves. There is no evidence that agave was ever their principal crop, or that “the hillsides were covered with mezcal plants.”

“Later, Franciscan missionaries visited the village and gave it a patron saint, San Andres (Saint Andrew). Royal land grants included the Indians who lived there. Franciscan Fray Sebastian de Parrago introduced the first oranges to Ajijic in 1562. Henceforth, the village was called ‘San Andres de Axixic.’ Its cobblestone streets-laid down during the days of Spanish rule-are still used today.”

Chronologically, this paragraph belongs centuries before any talk of haciendas or tequila. It also contains two significant inaccuracies. First, Franciscan accounts show that friar Sebastian de Parrago introduced the first oranges to the area in 1562, but to Chapala, not Ajijic. Secondly, there is zero evidence that Ajijic had any cobblestone streets prior to the very end of the nineteenth century or early years of the twentieth century.

“After the border wars (1910-29), the Saenz hacienda was split into many small holdings and all Mezcal cultivation ceased, as each Mezcal plant needs seven years to mature and only large estates can devote such acreage solely to growing plants.”

Hacienda El Cuije was owned by Sebastian Sainz for only a relatively short time, and there was never any large-scale tequila production in the Ajijic area, even when Sainz was the hacendado. Summers contradicts her own account in a later paragraph when she claims that “In the early 1920s, Mr. Ramirez, Mayor of Chapala, purchased the Saenz Hacienda.”

“During the Porfirian Era (1875-1910), Ajijic was isolated from Chapala by land. Their commerce with the resort town of Chapala, which was five miles away, was confined to an occasional cargo canoe touching down at the Saenz Hacienda for a load of tequila or coffee beans.”

This emphasis on tequila and coffee completely ignores the important mining activity that was already occurring in Ajijic by the end of the nineteenth century. Overland transport prior to 1910 was poor, and principally by horseback, but Ajijic was not “isolated from Chapala by land.”

“In the early 1920s, Mr. Ramirez, Mayor of Chapala, purchased the Saenz Hacienda. He re-named it Hacienda Tlacuache (The Opossum). The property is still owned by the Ramirez family and has, over the years, been sublet to various people.”

The building referred to by Summers was never an hacienda. It was a taberna—a small, subsidiary building which was part of Hacienda El Cuije. El Cuije’s main residence and buildings (of which nothing now remains) were situated a short distance northwest of Chapala (between a building currently numbered as Prolongación Lázaro Cárdenas #145 and the Chapala libramiento). The taberna was bought by Casimiro Ramirez (who was never Mayor of Chapala) and renamed ‘Hacienda El Tlacuache,’ but this was an honorific title, which did not imply any functional or economic status. In the 1930s it became an inn named Posada Ajijic; the building still belongs to members of the Ramirez Family.

Postcard (published by E Esteban) of Posada Ajijic, mailed in 1974.

Postcard (published by E Esteban) of Posada Ajijic, mailed in 1974.

“In 1925, Ajijic was discovered by European intellectuals and became a refuge for those fleeing political persecution after World War I. Louisa Heuer, a writer, and her brother Paul, were German refugees. They owned Casa Particular—a small inn overlooking the lake. Zara Alexeyewa, the great-granddaughter of Gideon Wells, Secretary of the Navy under President Abraham Lincoln—first came to Guadalajara in 1925 to dance at the Teatro Degollado. She was accompanied by her mother and adopted brother, Holger Mehner.”

This is a mix of fact and fantasy. The Heuers’ arrival had nothing to do with World War I, and there is no evidence that they were refugees or in Ajijic prior to 1933. On the other hand, Austrian count Alex von Mauch did purchase a lakefront property in Ajijic in 1928 (and other non-Mexicans are known to have purchased property in the village even earlier). Zara Alexeyewa (aka ‘La Rusa’) had no familial connection of any kind to Gideon Wells. Her dance partner’s surname was Mehnen, not Mehner. Zara and Holger first arrived in Guadalajara in 1924, and first performed in the city in 1925. They did not live in Ajijic until 1940.

“The trio had just finished a tour of Europe and South America where Zara and Holger had introduced ballet to that continent.”

Zara’s mother did not accompany the dance duo on their impromptu tour of South America. And there had been many many ballet performances of note in South America long before Zara and Holger ever set foot on the continent. For example, European ballets had first performed in Buenos Aires in the 1860s.

Summers later turns her attention to what she terms the Ajijic gold rush, paraphrasing a passage in the penultimate chapter of Neill James’ Dust on my Heart, where James reports (without stating any clear time frame) what she had been told by Paul (‘Pablo’) Heuer:

“In the mid-30s, three engineers, their curiosity aroused as to why a certain red hill (variously called Bald Mountain, Gold Mountain, or simply Quarry) was without growth when all others in the area were wooded, discovered gold in the hill.
Almost overnight the gold rush was on. Corn mills were transformed into gold mines. The women of the village reverted to hand-operated metates to pulverize corn for family tortillas. Farmers left their fields, fishermen dropped their nets, and trouble beset Ajijic as food became scarce. Neighbors quarreled. Murders and mayhem were rife.
Leaders in the gold rush were the ballet dancers, Zara and Holger, for they owned the best mine. Zara found life as a dancer tame, compared with gold mining. Armed with her “treasure finder,” Zara looked for gold, but found only trouble. One associate after another cheated her. The dream of gold began to fade.
There was gold in the hills, but not in sufficient quantity. The gold fever cooled. Men returned to their tiendas. Gold mills went back to grinding corn. Fishermen spread their nets again, and farmers re-plowed their land. The Ajijic gold rush had ended.”

As I explain in Foreign Footprints in Ajijic, gold mining in the hills behind Ajijic began much earlier than the “mid-30s,” and by 1885 there were already thirty silver and gold mines in Ajijic. Production peaked in the first decade of the twentieth century, with occasional short-lived revivals thereafter. Zara’s first investment in a mine in Ajijic was in 1925. The story about the three engineers may well be true, but with the very significant caveat that the reason why “a certain red hill (variously called Bald Mountain, Gold Mountain, or simply Quarry) was without growth when all others in the area were wooded,” was probably because it was the precise site, many years earlier, of a cyanide processing plant, installed by the largest mining company, which had poisoned the soil.

The remainder of Summers’ account is far less contentious, though I’ve never found evidence that the “Dane Chandos” book Village in the Sun ever won an award, and the lengthy excerpt from Sybille Bedford’s book The Sudden View (which Bedford openly admitted was fictional, not factual) has minimal relevance to the history of Ajijic.

Conclusion? “A Brief History of Ajijic” may be short and easy to read, but—in terms of history—it is hopelessly inaccurate.

The time has come for someone to write a more realistic short history of Ajijic.

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.

Foreign Footprints in Ajijic: Decades of Change in a Mexican Village offers more details about the twentieth-century history of Ajijic.

References

  • Carolyn Baus de Czitrom. 1982. Tecuexes y Cocas. Dos grupos de la región de Jalisco en el siglo XVI. Mexico City: INAH.
  • Henri G Galeotti. 1839. “Coup d’oeil sur la Laguna de Chapala au Mexique, avec notes géognostiques.” Acad. Roy. Soc. Bruxelles, Bull., 6, pt 1: 14-19.
  • Mariano Bárcena. 1888. Ensayo estadístico del Estado de Jalisco. Gobierno de Jalisco.
  • June Nay Summers. “A Brief History of Ajijic.” El Ojo del Lago, December 2012.

Comments, corrections and additional material are welcome, whether via the comments feature or email.

Apr 252024
 

Unlike most of my writing, this is a very personal post. It was 1980—and I was in my mid-twenties—when I first saw Lake Chapala. I was only there a few hours, took a few photos, and was not overly impressed. It was to be several years before I revisited. What I hadn’t realized, until quite recently, was just how apropos the Kodachrome slides I took during that first brief visit would prove to be for most of my later life.

In 1980, I was on my way back to my teaching job in Mexico City from an Easter trip to the Copper Canyon, and was able to squeeze in two nights in a cheap hotel in Guadalajara before returning to the classroom. Given my limited time, and in the absence of a car, I decided the simplest way to see Mexico’s largest natural lake was to take a Panoramex day trip out to the lake.

Jocotepec. © Tony Burton, 1980.

Jocotepec. © Tony Burton, 1980.

The Panoramex bus took highway 15 out of Guadalajara and made its first brief stop in the center of Jocotepec. Little did I realize at the time that this unprepossessing village would later become my home.

Ajijic and its eagle. © Tony Burton, 1980.

Ajijic and its eagle. © Tony Burton, 1980.

The next stop on this tour was Ajijic. Given only limited time to explore the village, I set off east along the lakeshore to get a better view of the picturesque setting, not realizing at the time that the view I captured included the Ajijic Eagle (Cerro del Aguila or Cerro Colorado).

Ajijic beach. © Tony Burton, 1980.

Ajijic beach. © Tony Burton, 1980.

On the way back to the bus, I just had time to take three quick costumbrista snaps of the lakeshore: fishing nets, washerwomen and a fishing boat, with no idea that these subjects had been depicted by numerous serious artists and photographers for decades.

Washing clothes, Ajijic. © Tony Burton, 1980.

Washing clothes, Ajijic. © Tony Burton, 1980.

Ajijic fishing boat. © Tony Burton, 1980.

Ajijic fishing boat. © Tony Burton, 1980.

From Ajijic, the Panoramex bus stopped at the Chula Vista hotel for lunch, before the short drive to Chapala. Because it was only a few days after Easter, the town of Chapala was humming and buzzing, though we had such a short time there that I barely managed to snatch this quick photo from the pier.

Chapala waterfront. © Tony Burton, 1980.

Chapala waterfront and Cerro San Miguel. © Tony Burton, 1980.

It was another six years (by which time I was living in Guadalajara) before I saw Lake Chapala again. Within a year, I’d met my future wife, the director of the School for the Deaf in Jocotepec, and we’d had three weddings: civil, religious and a special service organized by the staff of the school for the students. The rest, as they say, is history!

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.

Several chapters of Foreign Footprints in Ajijic: Decades of Change in a Mexican Village offer more details about the history of the artistic community in Ajijic. The story of the School for the Deaf is told in my wife’s book New Worlds for the Deaf.

Comments, corrections and additional material are welcome, whether via the comments feature or email.

Apr 182024
 

When not writing about mariachi, historian Dr Álvaro Ochoa Serrano has dedicated much of his life to writing about Lake Chapala. His latest book, titled La Ciénega de Chapala, published in 2023, is an extraordinarily well-researched account of the history of the eastern end of Lake Chapala, told through four detailed and elegantly written case studies.

Alvaro-Ochoa-portada-1

The first, centered on the settlement near Jiquilpan named Tototlán (Totolán), walks readers through its development from early colonial times, with an accessible account of how the population, land tenure and economy were influenced by demographic factors, disease, banditry, land transfers and disputes, against a backdrop including the numerous political upheavals of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The second part, about how the War of Independence played out in the wider region, provides an insightful analysis of the insurgents’ defense of Mezcala Island, and of how the war impacted the existing haciendas and settlements east and south of the lake.

Guaracha, the largest of these haciendas, is the subject of the book’s third part, which looks at the changing and sometimes violent relationships between the hacienda and its neighboring settlements from the mid-nineteenth century to modern times. Guaracha lost its proximity to the lakeshore after the first decade of the twentieth century, when the eastern end of the lake was drained for agricultural use.

The fourth part is a masterful account of the area around Briseñas, Buenavista, Cumuato and Maltaraña, haciendas on a deltaic area formed, over thousands of years, by the Río Lerma where it enters the lake. This section skillfully incorporates details of land transactions, ownership, and reclamation while explaining the significant influence of the Castellanos family in the nineteenth century, and the short-lived meteoric rise to political power of Manuel Cuesta Gallardo at the end of the Porfiriato.

Ochoa is a consummate, award-winning historian. His text includes detailed footnotes, a selection of photographs and maps, an extensive bibliography and a full index for names of people and places. His books are available via Spanish-language bookstores and online via http://www.libreriacolmich.com/ amazon.com.mx and bookstore sites such as https://www.gandhi.com.mx (tip: search using “Alvaro Ochoa Serrano”)

La Ciénega de Chapala: un cuarteto de textos a flote is currently available only in Jiquilpan and in Morelia:
– Jiquilpan: Librería del Portal frente a la Plaza; and from Tere Sánchez, Unidad Académica de Estudios Regionales de la UNAM (9 to 3, and 5 to 7).
– Morelia: Librería “La Galaxia de Gutenberg,” calle Ortega y Montañez, casi esquina con Martínez de Lejarza en el barrio de Capuchinas.

Book: Álvaro Ochoa Serrano. 2023. La Ciénega de Chapala: un cuarteto de textos a flote. Tlalpujahua: Editorial Morevalladolid.

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.

Chapter 6 of Lake Chapala: A Postcard History is an English-language account of some of the major changes that occurred in this general area during the twentieth century.

Comments, corrections or additional material are welcomed. Please use the comments feature at the bottom of individual posts, or email us.

Apr 112024
 

Juan Aráuz Lomeli (ca 1887-1970) is known to have taken photos of Chapala from the 1920s onward. The somewhat unusual surname Aráuz or Arauz—the accent is optional—is of Basque origin. Though not a full-time professional photographer, Juan Aráuz Lomeli stamped “ARAUZ – FOT.” and an address in Guadalajara on the reverse of the photos he published as postcards, and sometimes added a small white circle containing a stylized JA (or JAL) alongside the caption.

Juan Aráuz Lomeli’s son, Juan Victor Aráuz Gutiérrez (1914-2000), was also a photographer who lived and worked in Guadalajara. Because they sometimes photographed the same subject at the same time, this has led to some uncertainty in the case of some images as to the true identity of the photographer. In addition, more than one edition of some images is known, distinguished by distinct styles of lettering for the captions.

Juan Aráuz Lomeli is known to have photographed and published more than a dozen different postcard views of Chapala.

Juan Aráuz Lomeli. Chapala. ca 1926.

Juan Aráuz Lomeli. “Chapala.” ca 1926.

This particular card (above), number 156, is entitled “Chapala – Jal” and has a handwritten notation dating it to 4 October 1926, leaving no doubt that it is the work of Juan Aráuz Lomeli rather than his son. The reverse of the card has a rectangular hand-stamped box reading (on three lines) “ARAUZ- FOT. / HGO 19, NUM 881, / GUADALAJARA, MEX.”

It shows (left to right), the Villas Elena, Niza and Josefina. (See If Walls Could Talk: Chapala’s Historic Buildings and Their Former Occupants for the history of these interesting buildings.)

Some captions were probably added in haste, and occasionally are inaccurate. For example, this second card (below), which has an identical hand-written date, is mistakenly captioned “Villa Josefina;” the building in this photo is not Villa Josefina but the larger historic estate known as Villa Montecarlo.

Juan Aráuz Lomeli. Villa Josefina, Chapala. ca 1926.

Juan Aráuz Lomeli. Villa Montecarlo (despite the caption), Chapala. ca 1926.

Juan Aráuz Lomeli was born to Juan Aráuz and his wife, Austreberta Lomeli, in Guanajuato in about 1887 or 1888. He died in Guadalajara on 30 November 1970. Curiously, his death certificate mistakenly names his wife (who had died many years earlier) as Victoria Rodriguez in place of Victoria Gutiérrez. According to a contemporary newspaper, Victoria Gutiérrez de Arauz Lomeli had died on 15 July 1942, at the age of 52, though this age does not match the census data from 1930!

The household listed in 1930 comprised Juan Arauz Lomeli (aged 42), who gave his profession as photographer, his wife Victoria J de Arauz (36) and their four sons: Jorge (17), Juan Victor (15), Fernando (12) and Alfonzo (10). The name Fernando appears to have been an enumerator’s error for Francisco, since records show that Francisco Aráuz Gutiérrez (born ca 1918, and definitely the son of Juan Aráuz Lomeli and Victoria Gutiérrez) married twice in relatively quick succession in the 1940s, first in 1942, at the age of 25, and then in 1947.

Alberto Gómez Barbosa, in his multi-part series on photography in Jalisco for El Informador in 2004, recalled that Juan Aráuz Lomeli’s interest in photography began when he worked for the Compañia Eléctrica de Chapala, where one of the managers was Luis Gonzaga Castañeda. Gonzaga was a particularly keen photographer and inspired several colleagues, including Aráuz, to take up the hobby. Aráuz and Gonzaga both contributed photographs to illustrate Guadalajara Colonial, a book by José Cornejo Franco, as did a third photographer, Ignacio Gómez Gallardo.

Aráuz knew and was an admirer of José María Lupercio, another of the famous photographers of Guadalajara, whose timeless images of the city and of Lake Chapala have in many ways never been surpassed. Aráuz particularly admired the fact that Lupercio was a true artist, who eschewed timers and measuring scales in favor of mixing all his solutions for developing photographs by eye.

According to Gómez Barbosa, Aráuz became a good friend of José Clemente Orozco and took several singularly-striking portraits of the artist, including some reproduced in later biographies of the world-renowned muralist. As we saw in a previous post, Arauz’s son, Juan Victor Aráuz, also knew Orozco and later documented the progress of Orozco’s work on several murals in Guadalajara, including preliminary sketches that were later altered or never executed.

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.

My 2022 book Lake Chapala: A Postcard History uses reproductions of more than 150 vintage postcards to tell the incredible story of how Lake Chapala became an international tourist and retirement center.

Note: This post was first published 9 August 2019.

Sources

  • Alberto Gómez Barbosa. 2004. “La fotografía en Jalisco.” El Informador, 1 August 2004, 14.
  • El Informador: 16 July 1942, 11.

Comments, corrections and additional material are welcome, whether via the comments feature or email.

Apr 042024
 

In the late 1930s the government of President Lázaro Cardenas financed the completion of a paved highway from Mexico City to Guadalajara via Toluca, Morelia and Jiquilpan (Cardenas’s birthplace). To commemorate the first part, Mexico City to Morelia, author and art historian Pedro Ceuleneer de Gante was commissioned to write a short guidebook illustrated by maps and photographs for motorists using the improved route. Written in Spanish, this was published in 1939 as La Ruta de Occidente.

Mexico's Western Highways. c 1940.

By 1940, the road (now federal Highway 15) had been completed all the way to Guadalajara, finally linking Mexico’s two largest cities by a ‘modern’ highway. The tourist potential of this route had long been recognized, since it included the southern shore of Lake Chapala. To celebrate the achievement, Mexico’s Western Highways, an English-language version of the book was released. Academic Kent Dickson’s assertion that this is a translation of La Ruta de Occidente is mistaken: Mexico’s Western Highways, “Presented by Pemex Travel Club” was an entirely rewritten guide, expanded to extend the route all the way to Guadalajara.

The simple, but effective road maps in both Spanish and English versions were drawn by Pablo C de Gante, who also supplied some of the photos. Other photos are credited to POSTAMEX, Mauricio Yáñez, Ruperto Martínez, and ‘Chávez.’

At least two editions of Mexico’s Western Highways are known. They have identical interiors, but different covers and are printed on different grades of paper. The cover of the edition with thicker paper shows a man looking towards an earthenware bowl, with a traditional butterfly fishing net typical of Lake Pátzcuaro in the background. The front cover of the edition on thinner (cheaper) paper—a tourist edition with the logo and imprint of the Asociación Mexicana de Turismo (founded in 1939) on the back cover—shows Janitzio, the Lake Pátzcuaro island associated with Noche de Muertos (Night of the Dead).

Some idea of how difficult transport had been in this region prior to this highway’s completion can be gleaned from Leo Stanley’s account of riding horseback around the western end of the lake in 1937.

Equally, it is no coincidence that among the first high quality photographs of the south side of the lake are those taken by an American couple, Esther Henderson and Chuck Abbott, in about 1942 for the the Arizona Highways magazine.

Illustrations in the book relating to Lake Chapala include a view of the south shore; a photograph of a sail canoe, described as a “curious type of sailboat… popular among the native fishermen of Lake Chapala;” and a general shot of the resort town itself.

Chapala was where “the people from the city flock to enjoy the excellent swimming, to rest and recuperate. Many people of Guadalajara have built summer homes at Chapala; others go there for week-ends or simply to spend the day.”

The book paints an exaggeratedly idyllic picture of Chapala at the time:

The atmosphere of Chapala is essentially festive and gay. The town is very attractive with its white-walled houses, its beautiful gardens and promenades, the chalets which dot the water’s edge and the many palm trees which suggest the tropics. The air is always full of the music played and sung by strolling groups of mariachis. Good hotels and restaurants answer the practical needs of enjoying a stay in this delightful vacation place.

Swimming at Chapala is grand sport. The beaches are of fine clean sand, and the balmy climate induces one to spend hour upon hour alternately sunbathing and dipping into the water of this lovely mountain lake. Launches are available for making trips on the lake, including excursions to the islands known as Presidio and Alacranes.”

One interesting side note. The final map in the book (shown above) has a “Brick Works” midway between the side road to the Juanacatlán Falls (“The Niagara of Mexico”) and Guadalajara. Historically, there have been several brick works in that general area, including the one owned by English architect George Edward King at the start of the twentieth century. Among other buildings, King designed and built—using bricks from his own yard—Chapala’s iconic “Casa Braniff,” completed in 1905.

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.

Several chapters of Western Mexico: A Traveler’s Treasury describe the fascinating villages and towns along Highway 15, which links Mexico City to Guadalajara and beyond.

Sources

  • Kent L Dickson. 2013. “Una excursión por México en auto. Guías turísticas, 1925-1940.” 2013, Annual Juan Bruce-Novoa Mexican Studies Conference, UC Irvine.
  • Pablo C. de Gante. 1939. La Ruta de Occidente. Mexico: D.A.P.P. (Departamento Autónomo de Prensa y Publicidad).
  • Pablo C. de Gante. 1940. Mexico’s Western Highways. Mexico: Pemex Travel Club.

Comments, corrections and additional material are welcome, whether via the comments feature or email.

Mar 282024
 

Juan Victor Aráuz Gutiérrez (1914-2000) and his father, Juan Aráuz Lomeli, were photographers who lived and worked in Guadalajara. Because they sometimes photographed the same subject at the same time, there is uncertainty in the case of some images as to which of the two men was the photographer.

Juan Victor Aráuz Gutiérrez (sometimes mistakenly named as Juan Victor Aráuz Martínez) was born in Guadalajara in November 1914 and died in the city on 4 October 2000.

Alberto Gómez Barbosa was a good friend of Juan Victor Aráuz. In his multi-part series on photography in Jalisco for El Informador in 2004, Gómez Barbosa recalled that Juan Victor Aráuz had learned photography from early childhood before pursuing a career as a professional photographer.

His father’s friendship with José Clemente Orozco meant that Juan Victor Aráuz also got to know the great muralist. Juan Victor Aráuz not only chronicled the growth of Guadalajara in photographs but also documented the progress of Orozco’s work on the murals in the city’s university, Government Palace and Hospicio Cabañas (now the Instituto Cultural Cabañas). His photos have proved especially valuable to Orozco scholars since they include images of preliminary sketches that were later altered or never executed.

Along with Orozco, Aráuz was among the founders in 1935 of the Jalisco Union of Painters and Sculptors (Unión de Pintores y Escultores de Jalisco), formed to respond to the call by the Revolutionary Writers and Artists League (Liga de Escritores y Artistas Revolucionarias) for a National Assembly of Artists. Other members of the Jalisco Union with links to Lake Chapala included Ixca Farías, José María Servín and Rubén Mora Gálvez..

At the end of the 1930s, when the University of Guadalajara established a School of Fine Arts (Escuela de Artes Plasticas), Aráuz was appointed as its first photography instructor even though there was then no formal career path for student photographers. He remained in that position for many years and taught successive generations of students, many of whom subsequently became well-known photographers.

In 1948, Juan Victor Aráuz partnered with Gabriel Camarena to open the Camarauz photo shop selling cameras and all manner of photographic equipment. Aráuz’s story-telling prowess and willingness to share his experiences and techniques quickly made his store a very popular meeting place for the city’s bohemian architects, painters, writers and would-be photographers.

This card, an interesting aerial view clearly marked Camarauz, dates from the early 1950s and was taken to document the near-completion of the wide avenue (Francisco I. Madero) in Chapala that leads to the town’s jetty and lakeside promenade. Like many other prominent Guadalajara families of the time, Juan Victor Aráuz had a vacation home in Chapala.

Juan Victor Aráuz. Aerial view of Chapala, ca 1950.

Juan Victor Aráuz. Aerial view of Chapala, ca 1950.

Author Katie Goodridge Ingram recalls Aráuz with fondness, saying that she, like her mother and brothers, took their films to him to be developed and printed, and always enjoyed the experience. She chatted with Aráuz several times in Chapala, and remembers him as “a tall lanky man, with thinning black hair, large features in mouth and nose and hands, and the long slumped look of an accomplished aristocrat.” She was so impressed with his photos that she took a selection with her when she attended a US boarding school and college.

In 1950, recognizing the shortage of gallery space in Guadalajara, Aráuz opened the Galeria Camarauz where shows featured the works of locally-resident artists such as Thomas Coffeen, Matias Goeritz and many others. The legendary Dr. Atl (Gerardo Murillo) held a solo exhibit there entitled “Como nace y crece un volcán” (How a volcano is born and grows), based on the eruptions of Paricutin Volcano in Michoacán in the previous decade. The Galería Camarauz also sponsored an exhibition of photographs taken by the distinguished Jaliscan writer Juan Rulfo (a personal friend of Victor’s) at the Casa de Cultura in Guadalajara in 1960.

Contemporaries praised Aráuz as a sensitive person with a great sense of humor. He was also an inveterate traveler. His time living with the indigenous Huichol Indians in their remote ancestral lands in the mountains of northern Jalisco and neighboring states proved to be his springboard to national fame. In 1959, an exhibit featuring a selection of his extraordinary Huichol photographs – “Los huicholes ante mi cámara” – opened at the Modern Art Museum in Mexico City in early February. It ran until the end of March. This was the very first time any photographer had been given a solo exhibit at the museum. The exhibit was a personal triumph. His sensitive and powerful Huichol images are now on permanent exhibition in the Sala Juan Víctor Aráuz of the Casa de la Moneda (former Mint), a museum in Zacatecas.

Juan Victor Aráuz was an avid and intelligent collector of early photography. His extensive and unrivaled collection of old photographic plates, daguerreotypes, negatives and prints of Guadalajara, many dating back to the 19th century, was bequeathed to the city. Aráuz researched early photography in Guadalajara and in 1988 a selection of his reproductions of early photographs, accompanied by texts by Francisco Ayón Zester, was published by the Unidad Editorial del Gobierno del Estado de Jalisco as Guadalajara, iconografía del siglo XIX y principios del XX.

The largest ever exhibition of photographs by Juan Víctor Aráuz was held in the Ex-Convento del Carmen in Guadalajara from December 1993 to the following January. On display were 338 images spanning half a century, with examples of Aráuz’s best work from all over Mexico, as well as from New York and several countries in Europe, Africa and Asia, alongside several abstract compositions.

Juan Víctor Aráuz won numerous awards for his work, including the Premio Jalisco (Jalisco Prize)in 1957, awarded by then governor Agustín Yáñez, the Premio Ciudad de Guadalajara (City of Guadalajara Prize) in 1998 and the Premio Jalisco en Artes (Jalisco Arts Prize) in 1982.

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My 2022 book Lake Chapala: A Postcard History uses reproductions of more than 150 vintage postcards to tell the incredible story of how Lake Chapala became an international tourist and retirement center.

Note: This post was first published 23 August 2019.

Sources:

  • Arturo Camacho. 2008. “La fotografía en Guadalajara”. Revista La Tarea (revista de la Sección 47 del Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores de la Educación), #6, Oct 2008.
  • Justino Fernandez. 1960. “Catálogo de las Exposiciones de Arte en 1959.” Suplemento del Num. 29 de los Anales del Instituto de Investigaciones Esteticas, Mexico, 1960.
  • Alberto Gómez Barbosa. 2004. “La fotografía en Jalisco.” El Informador, 1 August 2004, 14.
  • Francisco Javier Ibarra. 2005. “Juan Víctor Arauz: espejo de la memoria III.” El Informador, 17 July 2005, 14-B.
  • El Informador: 5 October 2000.
  • Katie Goodridge Ingram, personal communication, July 2018.
  • Raquel Tibol. 1994. “Gran Exposicion Fotografica De Juan Victor Arauz”, Proceso, 22 January 1994.

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